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.  WOEKS 

OF 


THOMAS   HILL   GREEN 


LATB   FBLLOW   OF  BALUOL  OOLLHOB,  AlH) 

WHTrE*B  FBOFSSSOB  OF   MORAL  PHILOSOPHY  IN  THB 

UmYEBSITT   OF   OXFORD 


^ 


U^'  ""^ 


BDITBD   BT 

R.  L.  NETTLESHIP 

VBLLOW    OV    BALLXOL    COLLIQl^     OXrOBD 


•  VOL.  L* 
PHILOSOPHICAL    WORKS  > 

THIRD    EDITION 

[TFNIVERSITTj 

LONDON 

LONGMANS,    GEEEN,    AND    CO. 

AMD  NEW  TOBE  :  16  EAST  16"  8TBEEI 
1894 

All   rights    reiervtd 


Cd^s-s— 


[Vl<i  IV-tHSITYJ 

PREFACE  OF  THE  EDITOR. 


This  edition  of  the  writings  of  the  late  Professor  Green 
will  include  a  selection  from  his  unpublished  papers, 
and  all  his  printed  works  except  the  *  Prolegomena  to 
Ethics*  (Oxford,  1883). 

The  first  volume  consists  of  his  two  principal  pieces 
of  philosophical  criticism.  The  *  Introductions  *  to 
Hume's  *  Treatise  of  Human  Nature*  were  originally 
published  in  1874,  in  the  first  and  second  volumes  of 
the  edition  of  Hume's  works  which  he  and  Mr.  T.  H. 
Grose  were  preparing  for  Messrs.  Longman.  He  had 
always  been  convinced  that  the  English  speculation  of 
the  last  hundred  years  had  been  stationary  or  retro- 
grade because  it  had  not  really  faced  the  problem  which 
Hume  had  bequeathed  to  it,  and  that  the. first  con- 
dition of  progress  was  a  thorough  re-examination  of 
the  foundations  upon  which,  though  Hume  had  shown 
their  instability,  it  was  still  consciously  or  unconsciously 
building.  Thus  the  history  and  criticism  of  the  Enghsh 
philosophy  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
had  long  engaged  his  attention,  and  formed  the  subject 
of  repeated  courses  of  lectures,  several  drafts  of  which 
still  remain  among  his  papers.  His  results  were  finally 
embodied  in  the  two  *  Introductions,'  which  form  an 
elaborate  critical  exposition  of  the  metaphysical  and 


VI  PREFACE. 

moral  system  of  Hume  and  its  affiliation  to  that  of 
Locke. 

Three  years  later,  feeling  that  *  each  generation  re- 
quires the  questions  of  philosophy  to  be  put  to  it  in  its 
own  language,  and,  unless  they  are  so  put,  will  not  be 
at  the  pains  to  understand  them '  (p.  373),  he  began  to 
apply  the  same  principles  of  criticism  to  contempo- 
rary Enghsh  psychology  as  represented  by  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer  and  Mr.  G.  H.  Lewes.  Of  this  discussion.  Parts 
I,  n,  HI,  and  V  were  published  in  the  *  Contemporary 
Eeview '  for  December  1877,  March  1878,  July  1878, 
and  January  1881 ;  Part  IV,  which  was  intended  for  the 
same  Eeview,  was  withheld  on  account  of  Mr.  Lewes' 
death  in  1878  and  was  not  continued ;  it  is  now  pub- 
lished for  the  first  time. 

In  reprinting,  a  few  obvious  corrections  have  been 

made  in  the  text,  and  the  division  into  sections  and 

marginal  analysis,  which  the  author  had  made  for  the 

*  Introductions  *  to  Hume,  has  been  continued  through 

most  of  the  volume. 

OZFOBD :  Maroh,  ISS6 


^university] 
CONTENTS 

OF 

THE     FIRST     VOLUME. 


Lntboduotioks  to  Huke's  *  Teeatise  op  Human  Natube.' 
L  Oeitebal  Intbodugtion. 

PAflS 

How  the  history  of  philosophy  should  be  studied       •        •        •  1 

Hume  the  last  great  English  philosopher      •         •         •        •  2 

Kant  his  true  successor 2 

Distinction  between  literary  history  and  the  history  of  philo* 

sophical  systems 3 

-Object  of  the  present  enquiry 5 

Locke's  problem  and  method        ••••••  5 

His  notion  of  the  *  thinking  thing  *••••••  6 

JIiLb  he  will  passively  observe     ••••••  6 

Is  such  observation  possible  7   •••••••  7 

Why  it  seems  so •  8 

Locke's  account  of  origin  of  ideas     ••••••  8 

Its  ambiguities  fa)  In  regard  to  sensation      •        •        •        •  8 

(b)  In.  regard  to  ideas  of  reflection 9 

What  is  the  <  tablet '  impressed? 10 

Does  the  mind  make  impressions  on  itself?        •         •        •         .11 

Source  of  these  difficulties 11 

The  '  simple '  idea,  as  Locke  describes  it,  is  a  '  complex '  idea  of 

substance  and  relation 12 

How  this  contradiction  is  disguised 12 

Locke's  way  of  interchanging  '  idea  *  and  '  quality  *  and  its 

effects 13 

Primary  and  secondary  qualities  of  bodies    .         •         •        •  14 

'  Simple  idea  *  represented  as  involving  a  tiieory  of  its  own  cause  15 

Phrases  in  which  this  is  implied 15 

Feeling  and  felt  thing  confused 16 

The  simple  idea  as  '  ectype '  other  than  mere  sensation      •         .  17 
It  involves  a  judgment  in  which  mind  and  thing  are  distin- 
guished .         •        •        •                 19 

And  is  equivalent  to  what  he  afterwards  calls  'knowledge  of 
identity '      • .20 


VlU  CONTENTS  OP 

PAOI 

Only  a«  such  can  it  be  named 21 

The  same  implied  iu  calling  it  an  idea  of  an  object    .        •        •  21 
'MsdefoTj  not  5y,  us,  and  therefore  according  to  Locko  really 

existent 22 

What  did  he  mean  by  this  ? 22 

ExiBtence  as  the  mere  presence  of  a  feeling  .        •        •        •  23 

Existence  as  reality 24 

By  confusion  of  these  two  meanings,  reality  and  its  conditions 

are  represented  as  given  in  simple  feeling  ....  25 

Tet  reality  involves  complex  ideas  which  are  made  by  the  mind  25 
Such  are  substance  and  relation  which  must  be  foimd  in  every 

object  of  knowledge     .                 27 

Abstract  idea  of  substance  and  complex  ideas  of  particular  sorts 

of  substance 28 

The  abstract  idea  according  to  Locke  at  once  precedes  and  fol- 
lows the  complex 29 

Beferenoe  of  ideas  to  nature  or  God,  the  same  as  reference  to 

substance 80 

But  it  is  explicitly  to  substance  that  Locke  makes  them  refer 

themselves 81 

In  the  process  by  which  we  are  supposed  to  arrive  at  complex 

ideas  of  substances  the  beginning  is  the  same  as  the  end     •  81 
Doctrine  of  abstraction  inconsistent  with  doctrine  of  complex 

ideas 82 

The  confusion  covered  by  use  of '  particulars '       •        •        •  83 

Locke*s  account  of  abstract  general  ideas  .        »        •        •        •  83 

'  Things '  not  general 84 

Generality  an  invention  of  the  mind 85 

The  result  is,  that  the  feeling  of  each  moment  is  alone  real    .  85 

How  Locke  avoids  this  result 86 

The  '  particular '  waa  to  him  the  individual  qualified  by  general 

relations 87 

This  is  the  real  thing  from  which  abstraction  is  supposed  to  start  88 

Yet,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  relation,  a  creation  of  thought  .  89 

Summary  of  the  above  contradictions 40 

They  cannot  be  overcome  without  violence  to  Locke's  funda- 
mental principles         • 41 

As  real  existence,  the  simple  idea  carries  with  it  '  invented '  re- 
lation of  cause        • 42 

C!orrelativity  of  cause  and  substance .43 

How  do  we  know  that  ideas  correspond  to  reality  of  things?  •  43 

Locke's  answer * .  44 

It  assumes  that  simple  ideas  are  consciously  referred  to  things 

that  cause  them 45 

Lively  ideas  real,  because  they  must  be  effects  of  things     •         .  45 

Present  sensation  gives  knowledge  of  existence      •        •        .  46 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME.  ix 

PAQl 

Beaaons  why  its  testimony  must  be  trusted        ....  47 

How  does  this  acoount  fit  Locke's  definition  of  knowledge      •  48 
Locke's  acoount  of  the  testimony  of  sense  renders  his  question  as 

to  its  veracity  superfluous 49 

Confirmations  of  the  testimony  turn  upon  the  distinction  be- 
tween '  impression'  and  '  idea ' 50 

They  depend  on  language  which  pre-suppoaes  the  ascription  of 

sensation  to  an  outward  cause 50 

This  ascription  means  the  clothing' of  sensation  with  inyented 

relations 51 

What  is  meant  by  restricting  the  testimony  of  sense  to  present 

existence? 52 

Such  restriction,  if  maintained,  would  render  the  testimony  un- 
meaning.   53 

But  it  is  not  maintained :  the  testimony  is  to  operation  of  per- 
manent identical  things 54 

Locke's  treatment  of  relations  of  cause  and  identity       .        ,  55 
That  from  which  he  derives  idea  of  cause  pre-supposes  it  .        .55 

Bationale  of  this  '  petitio  principii  * 56 

Kelation  of  cause  has  to  be  put  into  sensitive  experience  in 

order  to  be  got  from  it 57 

Origin  of  the  idea  of  identity  according  to  Locke  ...  58 

Relation  of  identity  not  to  be  distinguished  from  idea  of  it         .  58 

This  *  invented '  relation  forms  the  *  veiy  being  of  things '     .  59 

Locke  fails  to  distinguish  between  identity  and  mere  unity         .  60 
Feelings  are  the  real,  and  do  not  admit  of  identity.     How  then 

can  identity  be  real  7 61 

Tet  it  is  from  reality  that  the  idea  of  it  is  derived      ...  62 

Transition  to  Locke's  doctrine  of  essence      ....  62 

This  repeats  the  inconsistency  found  in  his  doctrine  of  substance  63 

Phm  to  be  followed 63 

What  Locke  understood  by  '  essence ' 64 

Only  to  nominal  essences  that  general  propositions  relate,  i.e.  only 

to  abstract  ideas  having  no  real  existence  »        •        ,        .  65 

An  abstract  idea  may  be  a  simple  one       •        •        •        •        •  66 

How  then  is  science  of  nature  possible  ?        .        •        •        .  67 

Ko  '  uniformities  of  phenomena '  can  be  known         •        •        .  68 
Locke  not  aware  of  the  full  effect  of  his  own  doctrine,  which  is 

to  make  the  real  an  abstract  residuum  of  consciousness      .  68 
Ground  of  distinction  between  actual  sensation  and  ideas  in  the 

mind  is  itself  a  thing  of  the  mind 71 

Twomeaningsof  real  essence ,  72 

According  to  one,  it  is  a  collection  of  ideas  as  qualities  of  a  thing : 
about  real  essence  in  this  sense  there  may  be  general  know- 
ledge   72 

Bat  such  real  essence  a  creature  of  thought  •        •        •        •  75 


X  CONTENTS    OF 

PAOl 

Hence  another  view  of  real  essence  as  unknown  qualities  of  un- 
known bodj •        .        .        •      75 

How  Locke  mixes  up  these  two  meanings  in  ambigiiity  about 

body 75 

Body  as 'parcel  of  matter' without  essence       •        •        •        •      76 
In  this  sense  body  is  the  mere  individuum   .         .         .         •  77 

Body  83  qualified  by  circumstances  of  time  and  place         .         .       77 
Such  body  Locke  held  to  be  subject  of*  primary  qualities* :  but 
are  these  compatible  with  particularity  in  time  7         •         .  78 

How  Locke  avoids  this  question 79 

Body  and  its  qualities  supposed  to  be  outside  consciousness  .  80 

How  can  primary  qualities  be  outside  consciousness,  and  yet 

knowable? 81 

Locke  answers  that  they  copy  themselves  in  ideas — Berkeley's 
rejoinder.     Locke  gets  out  of  the  difficulty  by  his  doctrine  of 

solidity 81 

In  which  he  equivocates  between  body  as  unknown  opposite  of 

mind  and  body  as  a  '  nominal  essence  * 82 

Rationale  of  these  contradictions 83 

What  knowledge  can  feeling,  even  as  referred  to  a  *  solid '  body, 

convey? .         .         •      84 

Only  the  knowledge  that  something  is,  not  what  it  is    •         .  86 

How  it  is  that  the  real  essence  of  things,  according  to  Locke, 

perishes  with  them,  yet  is  immutable 86 

Only  about  qualities  of  matter,  as  distinct  from  matter  itself,  thut 
Locke  feels  any  difficulty         ......  87 

These,  as  knowable,  must  be  our  ideas,  and  therefore  not  a  '  real 

essence' 88 

Are  the  '  primary  qualities '  then,  a  '  nominal  essence  '7         .  89 
According  to  Locke's  account  they  are  relations,  and  thus  inven- 
tions of  the  mind 89 

Body  is  the  complex  in  which  they  are  found        ...  90 

Do  we  derive  the  idea  of  body  from  primary  qualities,  or  the 

primary  qualities  from  idea  of  body  ? 91 

Mathematical  ideas,  though  ideas  of  *  primary  qualities  of  body,' 

have  '  barely  an  ideal  existence ' 92 

Summary  view  of  Locke's  difficulties  in  regard  to  the  real.         .       93 

Why  they  do  not  trouble  him  more 94 

They  re-appear  in  his  doctrine  of  propositions   ....       94 
The  knowledge  expressed  by  a  proposition,  tliough  certain,  may 

not  be  real,  when  the  knowledge  concerns  substances .         .  95 

In  this  case  general  truth  must  be  merely  verbal        .         .         •       97 
Mathematical  truths,  since  they  concern  not  substances,  may  be 

both  general  and  real 98 

Significance  of  this  doctrine 98 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME,  XI 

PAGI 

Fatal  to  the  notion  ihat  mathematical  trnths,  though  general,  are 
got  fiom  experience :  and  to  received  views  of  natural  science : 
but  Locke  not  so  dear  about  this     •         .         ...  99 

Ambiguity  as  to  real  essence  causes  like  ambiguity  as  to  science 

ofnatore 101 

Particular  experiment  cannot  afford  general  knowledge .         •         102 
What  knowledge  it  can  afford,  accordiog  to  Locke     •         •         .     102 
Not  the  knowledge  which  is  now  supposed  to  be  got  by  induc- 
tion        103 

Yet  more  than  Locke  was  entitled  to  suppose  it  could  give         .     104 
With  Locke  mathematical  truths,  though  ideal,  true  also  of 

nature 105 

Two  lines  of  thought  in  Locke,  between  which  a  follower  would 

have  to  choose 106 

Transition  to  doctrine  of  God  and  the  soul    .        •        •        .         107 
Thinking  substance — source  of  the  same  ideas  as  outer  substance 

Of  which  substance  is  perception  the  effect  ?  .         .         .         .     108 
That  which  is  the  source  of  substantiation  cannot  be  itself  a  sub- 
stance     109 

To  get  rid  of  the  inner  source  of  ideas  in  favour  of  the  outer 

would  be  &lBe  to  Locke 110 

The  mind,  which  Locke  opposes  to  matter,  perpetually  shifting     111 

Two  ways  out  of  such  difficulties 112 

'  Matter  *  and  '  mind '  have  the  same  source  in  self-consciousness     1 1 3 
Difficulties  in  the  way  of  ascribing  reality  to  substance  as  matter, 

re-appear  in  regard  to  substance  as  mind  .         •         •         .  113 

We  think  not  always,  yet  thought  constitutes  the  self        .         .114 
Locke  ndther  disguises  these  contradictions,  nor  attempts  to 

overcome  them 115 

Ib  the  idea  of  God  possible  to  a  consciousness  given  in  time  7      .     116 

Locke's  account  of  this  idea 116 

'Lifinity,'  according  to  Locke's  account  of  it,  only  applicable  to 

God,  if  God  has  parts 117 

Oan  it  be  applied  to  him  '  figuratively '  in  virtue  of  the  ind^- 

nite  number  of  His  acts? 118 

An  act,  finite  in  its  nature,  remains  so,  however  often  repeated     119 
God  only  infinite  in  a  sense  in  which  time  is  not  infinite,  and 
which  Locke  could  not  recognize— the  same  sense  in  which 

the  self  is  infinite 120 

How  do  I  know  my  own  real  existence  7 — Locke's  answer      .  122 

It  cannot  be  known  consistently  with  Locke's  doctrine  of  real 

existence 123 

But  he  ignores  this  in  treating  of  the  self      •         •        •        •  123 

Sense  in  which  the  self  is  truly  real 124 

Locke's  proof  of  the  real  existence  of  €rod    •        •        •        .125 


XU  OONTENTS  OP 

PAOI 

There  must  have  been  something  from  eternity  to  cause  what 

now  is 126 

How  'eternity  *  must  be  understood  if  this  argument  is  to  be 

valid :  and  how  '  cause ' 126 

The  world  which  is  to  prove  an  eternal  Grod  must  be  itself 

eternal 129 

But  will  the  God,  whose  existence  is  so  proven,  be  a  thinking 

being? 129 

Tes,  according  to  the  true  notion  of  the  relation  between  thought 

and  matter .        * 130 

Locke's  antinomies — Hume  takes  one  side  of  them  as  true     •  131 

Hume's  scepticism  fatal  to  his  own  premises      •        •        •        •  132 

This  derived  firom  Berkeley 133 

Berkeley's  religious  interest  in  making  Locke  consistent     •        •  133 

What  is  meant  bj  relation  of  mind  and  matter  7    .        •        •  134 

Confusions  involved  in  Locke's  materialism       .        •         •         .  134 
"^Two  ways  of  dealing  with    it.     Berkeley  chooses  the  most 

obvious  • 135 

His  account  of  the  relation  between  visible  and  tangible  ex- 
tension          136 

We  do  not  see  bodies  without  the  mind,  nor  yet  feel  them     •  137 

--^^-The'esse'of  body  isthe'percipi' 138 

What  then  becomes  of  distinction  between  reality  and  &ncy  7  138 

The  realssideas  that  God  causes 139 

Is  it  then  a  succession  of  feelings  ? 139 

Berkeley  goes  wrong  from  confusion  between  thought  and  feeling  140 
For  Locke's  '  idea  of  a  thing '  he  substitutes  '  idea '  simply  .  141 
Which,  if  idea=feeling,  does  away  with  space  and  body  .  142 
lie  does  not  even  retain  them  as  '  abstract  ideas '  .  .  .142 
On  the  same  principle  all  permanent  relations  should  disappear  143 
By  making  colour=relations  of  coloured  points,  Berkeley  repre- 
sents relation  as  seen 144 

Still  he  admits  that  space  is  constituted  by  a  succession  of  feel- 
ings           .        .  145 

If  so,  it  is  not  space  at  all ;  but  Berkeley  thinks  it  is  only  not 

pure  space 14«$ 

Space  and  pure  space  stand  or  &11  together       .        •        •        •  146 

Berkeley  disposes  of  space  for  fear  of  limiting  God  •  •  147 
How  he  deals  with  possibility  of  general  knowledge  .  •  .147 
His  theory  of  universals  of  value,  as  implying  that  universality 

of  ideas  lies  in  relation 148 

But  he  &ncies  that  each  idea  has  a  positive  nature  apart  from 

relation •        •        •         .         .  150 

Traces  of  progress  in  his  idealism 151 

His  way  of  dealing  with  physical  truths  •        •        •        •  152 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME.  xui 

PAQI 

If  tfaey  imply  pennanent  rdationa,  his  theory  properly  excludes 

them 152 

He  suppofles  a  divine  decree  that  one  feeling  shall  follow  another  153 
Locke  had  explained  reality  by  relation  of  ideas  to  outward 

body 153 

Liveliness  in  the  idea  eyidence  of  this  relation      .         •        •  154 

Berkeley  retains  this  notion,  only  substituting  '  God '  for  '  body '  154 
Not  r^aiding  the  world  as  a  system  of  intelligible  relations,  he 

could  not  regard  Grod  as  the  subject  of  it       .        •        •        •  155 

His  view  of  the  soul  as  '  naturally  immortal  *        .         .        .  156 

EDdleas  succession  of  feelings  is  not  immortality  in  true  sense  .  156 
Berkeley's  doctrine  of  matter  fatal  to  a  true  spiritualism :  as 

well  aa  to  a  true  Theism 157 

His  inference  to  God  fix>m  necessity  of  a  power  to  produce  ideas ; 

a  necessity  which  Hume  does  not  see 159 

A  different  turn  should' have  been  given  to  his  idealism,  if  it  was 

to  serve  his  purpose        •        * 160 

Hume's  mission       .•..•••••  161 

His  account  of  impressions  and  ideas    •        •        •        •        •  161 

Ideas  are  fidnter  impressions    .......  162 

^  Ideas '  that  cannot  be  so  represented  must  be  explained  as  mere 

words 162 

Home,  taken  strictly,  leaves  no  distinction  between  impressions 

of  reflection  and  of  sensation         ,...••  168 

Locke's  theory  of  sensation  disappears  .         .         •         •        •  163 

Physiology  won't  answer  the  question  that  Locke  asked     •        •  164 

Those  who  think  it  will  don't  understand  the  question  .  •  164 
Hume's  psychology  will  not  answer  it  either  .  .  •  .165 
It  only  seems  to  do  so  by  assuming  the  *  Action '  it  has  to  account 

ibr ;  by  assuming  that  impression  represents  a  real  world  .  166 

So  the  '  Positivist '  juggles  with  '  phenomena'  .         .  .168 

Essential  difference,  however,  between  Hume  and  the  '  Positivist '  1 68 

He  adopts  Berkeley's  doctrine  of  ideas,  but  without  Berkeley's 

saving  suppositions  in  regard  to  *  spirit '  and  relations         .  169 

His  account  of  these 171 

It  oorreeponds  to  Locke's  account  of  the  sorts  of  agreement  be- 
tween ideas    171 

Could  Hume  consistently  admit  idea  of  relation  at  all?       .         .172 
Only  in  regard  to  identity  and  causation  that  he  sees  any  diffi- 
culty        174 

These  he  treats  as  fictions  resulting  from  '  natural  relations '  of 
ideas :  i.e.  from  resemblance  and  contiguity  .         .         .        .174 

Lb  resemblance  then  an  impression  ? 175 

Distinction  between  resembling  feelings  and  idea  of  resemblance.  176 

Substances=:collections  of  ideas 177 

How  can  ideas  '  in  flux '  be  collected  ? 177 


Xiv  CONTENTS  OP 

PAG« 

Are  there  general  ideas  ?     Berkeley  said,  *  yes  and  no  *  •         .  17<$ 

Hnme  '  no '  simply 179 

How  he  accounts  for  the  appearance  of  there  being  such  •  179 
His  account  implies  that  *  ideas '  are  conceptions,  not  feelings  •  180 
He  virtually  yields  the  point  in  regard  to  the  predicate  of  pro^ 

positions 181 

As  to  the  subject,  he  equivocates  between  singleness  of  feeling 

and  individuality  of  conception 182 

Hesult  is  a  theory  which  admits  predication,  but  only  as  sin- 
gular       183 

All  propositions  restricted  in  same  way  as  Locke's  propositions 

about  real  existence 184 

The  question,  how  the  singular  proposition  is  possible,  the  vital 

one 185 

Not  relations  of  resemblance  only,  but  those  of  quantity  also, 
treated  by  Hume  as  feelings  ......     186 

He  draws  the  line  between  certainty  and  probability  at  the  same 
point  as  Locke ;  but  is  more  definite  as  to  probability,  and 
does  not  admit  opposition  of  mathematical  to  physical  cer- 
tainty— here  following  Berkeley 187 

His  criticisms  of  the  doctrine  of  primary  qualities  .  .  .189 
It  will  not  do  to  oppose  bodies  to  our  feeling  when  only  feeling 

can  give  idea  of  body 189 

T..ocke's  shuffle  of  *  body,'  *  solidity,'  and  *  touch,'  fiiirly  exposed  .     190 

True  rationale  of  Locke's  doctrine 192 

With  Hume  *body '  logically  disappears 192 

What  then? 193 

Can  space  survive  body  ?     Hume  derives  idea  of  it  *from  sight 

and  feeling 193 

Significance  with  him  of  such  derivation       .         .         .         .  194 

It  means,  in  effect,  that  colour  and  space  are  the  same,  and  that 

feeling  may  be  extended 194 

The  parts  of  space  are  parts  of  a  perception  .         .         .         .  195 

Yet  the  parts  of  space  are  CO- existent  not  successive  .         .         .196 
Hume  cannot  make  space  a  *  perception '  without  being  false  to 
his  own  account  of  perception ;  as  appears  if  we  put  *  feeling ' 
for  '  perception '  in  the  passages  in  question       .         .         .  197 

To  make  sense  of  them,  we  must  take  perception  to  mean  per- 
ceived thing,  which  it  can  only  mean  as  the  result  of  certain 

'fictions' •.         .         .         .     198 

If  felt  thing  is  no  more  than  feeling,  how  can  it  have  qualities?  200 
The  thing  will  have  ceased  before  ^e  quality  begins  to  be  •  201 
Hume  equivocates  by  putting  '  coloured  points '  for  colour .  .201 
Can  a  *  disposition  of  coloured  points '  be  an  impression  ?  .  •  202 
The  points  must  be  themselves  impressions,  and  therefore  not 
co-existent 203 


THE  HRST  y^:iS&ir>-^N'^"''  X7 


r^oi 


A  '  oompoimd  impression  '  excluded  by  Hume^s  doctrine  of 

time 204 

The  &ct  that  oolonn  mix,  not  to  the  purpose    ....     206 
Hov  Hume  avoids  appearance  of  identifying  space  with  colour, 

and  accounts  for  the  abstraction  of  space  .       *.         .         .  206 

In  80  doing,  he  implies  that  space  is  a  relation,  and  a  relation 

which  ifl  not  a  possible  impression 207 

No  logical  alternative  between  identifying  space  with  colour,  and 

admitting  an  idea  not  copied  from  an  impression  209 

In  his  account  of  the  idea  as  abstract^  Hume  really  introduces 
distinction  between  feeling  and  conception;  yet  avoids  ap- 
pearance of  doing  so,  by  treating  '  consideration  *  of  the  rela- 
tions of  a  felt  thing  as  if  it  were  itself  the  feeling    .        •         .     210 
Summary  of  contradictions  in  his  account  of  extension  •        •         212 
He  gives  no  account  of  quantity  as  such    .         .         .        •        .213 
His  account  of  the  relation  between  Time  and  Number .         •         214 

What  does  it  come  to  ? 214 

Unites  alone  really  exist :  number  a  '  fictitious  denomination '     215 
Yet  *  unites  *  and  *  number '  are  correlative ;  and  the  supposed 

fiction  unaccountable 216 

Idea  of  time  even  more  unaccountable  on  Hume's  principles        .     217 
His  ostensible  explanation  of  it    .         .         .         .         .         .  218 

It  tarns  upon  equivocation  between  feeling  and  conception  of 

relations  between  felt  things 219 

He  fiiilfl  to  assign  any  impression  or  compotmd  of  impressions 

from  which  idea  of  time  is  copied 220 

How  can  he  adjust  the  exact  sciences  to  his  theory  of  space  and 

time? 221 

In  order  to  seem  to  do  so,  he  must  get  rid  of  '  Infinite  Divisi- 
bility'     222 

Quantity  made  up  of  impressions,  and  there  must  be  a  least 

possible  impression 223 

Tet  it  is  admitted  that  there  is  an  idea  of  number  not  made  up 

of  impressions 224 

A  finite  division  into  impressions  no  more  possible  than  an  in- 
finite one 225 

In  Hume*s  instances  it  is  not  really  a  feeling,  but  a  conceived 

thing,  that  appears  as  finitely  divisible       ....         225 
Upon  true  notion  of  quantity  infinite   divisibility  follows  of 

oouzse 226 

What  are  the  ultimate  elements  of  extension  ?    1£  not  extended, 

what  are  they? 227 

ColouiB  or  coloured  points  ?     What  is  the  difference  ?        •        .    228 
True  way  of  dealing  with  the  question  .         .         .         .  228 

*  If  the  point  were  divisible,  it  would  be  no  termination  of  a  line.' 

Answer  to  this    .        •        •        • 229 

VOL.  I.  a 


Xvi  CONTENTS  OF 

PA<n 

What  becomea  of  the  exactneas  of  mathematics  according  to 
Hume? 280 

The  tmiversal  propositions  of  geometry  either  untrue  or  unmean- 
ing      281 

Distinction  between  Hume*s  doctrine  and  that  of  the  hypothetical 
nature  of  mathematics 282 

The  admission  that  no  relations  of  quantity  are  data  of  sense  re- 
moves difficulty  as  to  general  propositions  about  them     •        •    233 

Hume  does  virtually  admit  this  in  regard  to  numbers    .        •         284 

With  Hume  idea  of  vacuum  impossible,  but  logically  not  more 
so  than  that  of  space 285 

How  it  is  that  we  talk  as  if  we  had  idea  of  vacuum  according  to 
Hume 237 

His  explanation  implies  that  we  have  an  idea  virtually  the  same    288 

By  a  like  deyice  that  he  is  able  to  explain  the  appearance  of  our 
having  such  ideas  as  Causation  and  Identity  .         .        .     288 

Knowledge  of  relation  in  way  of  Identity  and  Causation  excluded 
by  Locke's  definition  of  knowledge 240 

Inference  a  transition  from  an  object  perceived  or  remembered 
to  one  that  is  not  so 241 

Belation  of  cause  and  effect  the  same  as  this  transition   .        .         242 

Yet  seems  other  than  this.  How  this  appearance  is  to  be  ex- 
plained         243 

Inference,  resting  on  supposition  of  necessary  connection,  to  be 
explained  before  that  connection 243 

Account  of  the  inference  given  by  Locke  and  Clarke  rejected      .     244 

Three  points  to  be  explained  in  the  inference  according  to  Hume     244 

a.  The  original  impi-ession  from  which  the  transition  is  made    245 

b.  The  transition  to  inferred  idea 245 

0.  The  qualities  of  this  idea 246 

It  results  that  necessary  connection  is  an  impression  of  reflection, 

i.e.,  a  propensity  to  the  transition  described  .         .         •         .     246 
The  transition  not  to  anything  beyond  sense         •        •        .  247 

Nor  determined  by  any  objective  relation  •        •         •        •     248 

Definitions  of  cause     ....••..  248 

a.  As  a  '  philosophical '  relation    ••;..«     249 
Is  Hume  entitled  to  retain  '  philosophical '  relations  as  distinct 

from  *  natural '  ? 249 

Examination  of  Hume^s  language  about  them    .         .         ,         .250 
Philosophical  relation  consists  in  a  comparison,  but  no  compari- 
son between  cause  and  effect 250 

The  comparison  is  between  present  and  past  experience  of  suc- 
cession of  objects 251 

Observation  of  succession  already  goes  beyond  sense      .         .  252 

As  also  does  the  '  observation  concerning  identity,'  which  the 
comparison  involves     .•••••,,     253 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME.  xvii 

PAQB 

Identity  of  objects  an  unavoidable  cmx  for  Hume         •         .         254 

HiB  account  <^  it 254 

Properly  with  him  it  is  a  fiction,  in  the  aense  that  we  have  no 

such  idea 255 

Yet  he  implies  that  we  have  such  idea,  in  saying  that  we  mis- 
take something  else  for  it 255 

Succession  of  like  feelings  mistaken  for  an  identical  object:  but 

the  feelings,  as  described,  are  ahready  such  objects      .        .  256 

Fiction  of  identity  thus  implied  as  source  of  the  propensity  which 

is  to  account  for  it 257 

With  Hume  continued  existence  of  percepdons  a  fiction  different 

fiom  their  identity 258 

Can  perceptions  exist  when  not  perceived  ?  .  .  •  .  259 
Existence  of  objects,  distinct  from  perceptions,  a  further  fiction  stiU  259 
Are  these  several  *  fictions '  really  different  firom  each  other  ?  .  260 
Are  they  not  all  involved  in  the  simplest  perception  ?  .  .  261 
Yet  they  are  not  possible  ideas,  because  copied  from  no  impres- 
sions   262 

Comparison  of  present  experience  with  past,  which  yields  rela- 
tion of  cause  and  effect,  pre-supposes  judgment  of  identity; 
without  which  there  could  be  no  recognition  of  an  object  as 

one  observed  before ■     .         263 

Hume  makes  conceptions  of  identity  and  cause  each  come  before 

'the  other 265 

Tbeir  true  correlativity 266 

Hume  quite  right  in  saying  that  we  do  not  go  morb  beyond 

sense  in  reasoning  than  in  perception 267 

How  his  doctrine  might  have  been  developed        •        •        .         267 

Its  actual  outcome 268 

No  philosophical  relation  admissible  with  Hume  that  is  not 

derived  firom  a  natural  one 269 

Examination  of  his  account  of  cause  and  effect  as  *  natural  rehi- 

lion' 270 

Double  meaning  of  natural  relation.     How  Hume  turns  it  to 

account 271 

If  an  effect  is  merely  a  constantly  observed  sequence,  how  can 

an  event  be  an  effect  the  first  time  it  is  observed  ?  .        •        .    271 
Hume  evades  this  question ;  still,  he  is  a  long  way  off  the  Induc- 
tive Logic,  which  supposes  an  objective  sequence       .        .         272 
Can  the  principle  of  uniformity  of  nature  be  derived  from  se- 
quence of  feelings  7 273 

With  Hume  the  only  uniformity  is  in  expectation,  as  determined 
by  habit;  but  strength  of  such  expectation  must  vary  in* 

definitely 274 

It  could  not  serve  the  same  purpose  as  the  conception  of  uni- 
formity of  nature         •        • 275 

a2 


xviii  CONTENTS  OF 

Hume  changes  the  meaning  of  this  expectation  by  his  account 

of  the  '  remembrance '  which  determines  it     .         .         .         .     276 
Bearing  of  his  doctrine  of  necessary  connexion  upon  his  argument 

against  miracles 276 

This  remembrance,  «s  he  describes  it,  supposes  conception  of  a 
system  of  nature  .         •  ......     277 

This  explains  his  occasional  inconsistent  ascription  of  an  objec- 
tive character  to  causation-       ......         278 

Beality  of  remembered  '  system  *  transferred  to  '  system  of  judg- 
ment'   279 

Beality  of  the  former  '  system '  other  than  vivacity  of  impressions    280 
It  is  constituted  by  relations,  which  are  not  impressions  at  all ; 
and  in  this  lies  explanation  of  the  inference  from  it  to  ^  sys- 
tem of  judgment ' 281 

Not  seeing  this,  Hume  has  to  explain  inference  to  latter  system 

as  something  forced  upon  us  by  habit 282 

ButiftK),  'system  of  judgment*  must  consist  of  feelings  con- 
stantly  experienced  which  only  differ  from  remembered  feel- 
ings inasmuch  as  their  liveliness  has  faded.         .         .         .  288 
But  how  can  it  have  faded,  if  they  have  been  constantly  repeated  ?     284 
Inference  then  can  give  no  new  knowledge        .         •         .        •     285 
Nor  does  this  merely  mean  that  it  cannot  constitute  new  pheno- 
mena, while  it  can  prove  relations,  previously  unknown,  be- 
tween phenomena •  286 

Such  a  distinction  inadmissible  with  Hume        ....     286 
His  distinction  of  probabili^  of  causes  from  that  of  chances 
might  seem  to  imply  conception  of  nature,  as  determining 

inference 287 

But  this  distinction  he  only  professes  to  adopt  in  order  to  explain 

it  away 288 

Laws  of  nature  are  unqualified  habits  of  expectation      .         .         289 
Experience,  according  to  his  account  of  it,  cannot  be  a  parent  of 

knowledge 290 

His  attitude  towards  doctrine  of  thinking  substance       .        .  291 

As  to  Immateriality  of  the  Sotd,  he  plays  off  Locke  and  Berkeley 

against  each  other,  and  proves  Berkeley  a  Spinozist        .         •     292 
Causality  of  spirit  treated  in  the  same  way    ....  293 

Disposes  of  '  personal '  identity  by  showing  contradictions  in 

Locke's  account  of  it 295 

Yet  can  only  account  for  it  as  a  '  fiction '  by  supposing  ideas 

which  with  him  are  impossible 295 

In  origin  this  '  fiction '  the  same  as  that  of  *  Body '    •        .         .     296 
Possibility  of  such  fictitious  ideas  implies  refutation  of  Hume's 
doctrine  •        •        •        •        • 297 


THE  FIBST  VOLUME.  XIX 

n.  Intboduotion  to  the  MoRAJi  Pabt  of  Hume's 

*  Tbbatisb.' 

PJLOI 

flume's  doctrine  of  morals  parallel  to  his  doctrine  of  nature  •        .  301 

Its  relation  to  Locke 801 

liocke's  account  of  freedom,  will,  and  desire        ....  802 
Two  questions :  Does  man  always  act  from  the  strongest  motive? 
and,  What  constitutes  his  motive  ?     The  latter  the  important 

question 808 

Distinction  between  desires  that  are,  and  those  that  are  not,  de- 
termined by  the  conception  of  self 804 

Effect  of  this  conception  on  the  objects  of  human  desire    .         .      804 
Objects  so  constituted  Locke  should  consistently  exclude:  But 
he  finds  room  for  them  by  treating  every  desire  for  an  ob- 
ject, of  which  the  attainment  gives  pleasure,  as  a  desire  for 

pleasure 805 

Confusion  covered  by  calling  '  happiness '  the  general  object  of 

desire 806 

'  Greatest  sum  of  pleasure '  and  '  Pleasure  in  general  ^  unmeaning 

expressions 807 

In  what  sense  of  happiness  is  it  true  that  it '  is  really  just  as  it 

appears'  7 808 

In  what  sense,  that  it  is  every  one's  object  7         .         .         .         .  809 
No  real  object  of  human  desire  can  ever  be  just  as  it  appears   .       809 
Can  Locke  consistently  aUow  the  distinction  between  true  hap- 
piness and  false  ? 810 

Or  responsibility  7 811 

Objections  to  the  Utilitarian  answer  to  these  questions         .         .811 
According  to  Locke,  present  pleasures  may  be  compared  with 

future,  and  desire  suspended  till  comparison  has  been  made .       812 
What  is  meant  by  *  present '  and  *  future '  pleasure  ?    .         .         ,814 
By  the  supposed  comparison  Locke  ought  only  to  have  meant 
the  competition  of  pleasures  equally  present  in  imagination : 
and  this  could  give  no  ground  for  responsibility    .         .         .815 
In  order  to  do  so,  it  must  be  imderstood  as  implying  determina- 
tion by  conception  of  self 816 

Locke  finds  moral  freedom  in  necessity  of  pursuing  happiness   .       817 
If  an  action  is  moved  by  desire  for  an  object,  Locke  asks  no  ques- 
tions about  origin  of  the  object 317 

But  what  is  to  be  said  of  actions,  which  we  only  do  because  we 

ought  7 818 

Their  object  is  pleasure,  but  pleasure  given  not  by  nature  but  by 

Uw 819 

Conformity  to  law  not  the  moral  good,  but  a  means  to  it .        .       820 


XX  CONTENTS  OP 

PAGB 

Hume  has  to  denve  from  ^  impreflsions  *  the  objects  which  Locke 

took  for  granted 820 

QuflBtions  which  he  found  at  issae.    a,  Ii  yirtue  interested? 

b.  What  is  conscience  7 821 

Hobbes*  answer  to  first  question .  .  •  •  •  .  .  822 
Counter-doctrine  of  Shaftesbury.     Vice  is  selfishness       •        .      828 

But  no  clear  account  of  selfishness 824 

Confusion  in  his  notioDS  of  self-good  and  public  good  .  .  824 
Is  all  living  for  pleasure,  or  only  too  much  of  it,  selfish  ?  .  .  825 
What  have  Butler  and  Hutcheson  to  say  about  it  7  •  .  .  825 
Chiefly  that  affections  terminate  upon  their  objects  .  .  .  826 
But  this  does  not  exclude  the  view  that  all  desire  is  for  pleasure  826 
Of  moral  goodness  Butler's  accouut  is  circular ....  827 
Hutcheson's  inconsistent  with  his  doctrine  that  reason  gives  no 

end 828 

Source  of  the  moral  judgment  .  .  .  .  ,  .  828 
Beceived  notion  of  reason  incompatible  with  true  view  .  .  828 
Shaftesbury^s  doctrine  of  rationad  affection ;  spoilt  by  doctrine  of 

'moral  sense' 829 

Consequences  of  the  latter  ........  880 

Is  an  act  done  for  '  virtue's  sake '  done  for  plet^ure  of  moral 

sense7 ,        .        ^      881 

Hume  excludes  every  object  of  desire  but  pleasure  ,  ,  .  881 
His  account  of  *  direct  passions '      ......      882 

All  desire  is  for  pleasure 888 

Yet  he  admits  '  passions '  which  produce  pleasure,  but  proceed 

not  from  it 888 

Desire  for  objects,  as  he  understands  it,  excluded  by  his  theory 

of  impresidoQS  and  ideas         , 884 

Pride  determined  by  reference  to  self 835 

This  means  that  it  takes  its  character  from  that  which  is  not  a 

possible '  impression ' 886 

Hume's  attempt  to  represent  idea  of  self  as  derived  fi^m  impres- 
sion       837 

Another  device  is  to  suggest  a  physiological  account  of  pride     .      839 

Falkcy  ofthis ,         .         .  889 

It  does  not  tell  us  what  pride  is  to  the  subject  of  it  .  •      840 

Account  of  love  involves  the  same  difiiculties ;  and  a  further  one 

as  to  nature  of  sympathy 841 

Bume's  account  of  sympathy ,         .  842 

it  implies  a  self-consciousness  not  reducible  to  impressions        ,       848 

Ambiguity  in  his  account  of  benevolence 844 

It  is  a  desire  and  therefore  has  pleasure  for  its  object        ,         ,       844 

What  pleasure  7 845 

Pleasure  of  sympathy  with  the  pleasure  of  another   ,         .         ,       845 


THE  FIBST  VOLUME.  zxi 

PAOB 

All  'paanans*  equally  interested  or  diantereeted ....  846 
ConiiiBion  arises  from  use  of  'passion'  alike    for  desire  and 

emotioiL 347 

Of  this  Hume  avails  himself  in  his  account  of  active  pity  .  .  347 
Explanation  of  apparent  conflict  between  reason  and  passion  •  348 
A  '  reasonable '  desire  means  one  that  excites  little  emotion  .         .  849 

Enumeration  of  possible  motives 8«50 

If  pleaimre  sole  motive,  what  is  the  distinction  of  self-love?  .  •  850 
Its  opposition  to  diunterested  desires,  as  commonly  understood, 

disappears 851 

It  is  desire  for  pleasure  in  general       .         •                 ...  851 
How  Hume  gives  meaning  to  this  otherwise  unmeanipg  defini- 
tion   852 

*  Interest/  like  other  motives  described,  implies  determination  by 

reason '      .        .  858 

Thus  Hume,  having  degraded  morality  for  the  sake  of  consistency, 

after  aU  is  not  consistent 858 

If  all  good  is  pleasure,  what  is  moral  good  ?         .        .        .        .  854 

Ambigui^  in  Locke's  view 854 

Development  of  it  by  Clarke,  which  breaks  down  for  want  of  true 

view  of  reason 855 

With  Hume,  moral  good  is  pleasure  excited  in  a  particular  way, 
viz. :  in  the  spectator  of  the  '  good '  act  and  by  the  view  of  its 

tendency  to  produce  pleasure 856 

Moral  sense  is  thus  sympathy  with  pleasure  qualified  by  consider- 
ation of  general  tendencies 358 

In  order  to  account  for  the  facts  it  has  to  become  sympathy  with 

unfelt  feelings 359 

Can  the  distinction  between  the  '  moral '  and  '  natural '  be  main- 
tained by  Hume?  859 

What  is  '  artificial  virtue '  ? 360 

No  ground  for  such  distinction  in  relation  between  motive  and 

act 861 

Motive  to  artificial  virtues 862 

How  artificial  virtues  become  moral  ......  868 

Interest  and»Bympathy  account  for  all  obligations  civil  and  moral  864 
What  is  meant  by  an  action  which  ought  to  be  done        •        .       865 
Sense  of  moiali^  no  motive       ....  ,        .  866 

When  it  seems  so  the  motive  is  really  pride     ....      367 

Distincdon  between  virtuous  and  vicious  motive  does  not  exist 
for  person  moved 867 

*  Gonsciousneas  of  sin '  disappears    ......      369 

Only  respectability  remains 369 

And  even  this  not  consistently  accounted  for  .         .         .        .870 


xxu  contents  of 

Mb.  Hesbebt  Spenoeb  aitd   Mb.  G.  H.  Lbweb:    Theib 

APPLIOATION     OF      TSE      DOOTBINE     OF     EyOLUTIOK     TO 

Thought. 

PAET  L 

MB.  8PEK0EB  ON  THE  BELATIOK  OF  SUBJECT 
AND  OBJEOT. 

PAGB 

Current  English  pBychology  ignores  the  metaphjsical  question 

raised  by  Hume : 378 

The  question,  yi^.  How  is  knowledge  possible?    Necessity  for 

asking  it 874 

Current  psychology  does  not  really  discard  metaphysics  .  .  875 
Meaning  of  the  question,  How  is  knowledge  possible  ?  .  .  876 
It  concerns  the  object  of  knowledge,  and  must  be  answered  before 

the  subjective  process  can  be  investigated  ....  377 
Lockers  double  interpretation  of  the  doctrine  that  knowledge  is  of 

'ideas' 878 

Its  development  by  Berkeley  : 879 

And  by  Hume 880 

The  modern  'ezperientialist'  does  not  oomplete,  but  misunder- 
stands Hume's  doctrine : 882 

As  he  does  also  that  of  Kant,  which  is  not  touched  by  the  doc- 
trine of '  transmission ' 888 

For  the  question  still  remains,  How  do  there  come  to  be  '  &cts ' 

or  an  *  objective  world  7  * 384 

A  relation  between  subject  and  object  is  the  datum  of  Mr.  Spen- 
cer's system.     His  conception  of  '  idealism ' .         .         .         .       885 
True  idealistic  view  of  the  relation  of  subject  and  object       .         .  886 
Mr.  Spencer  explains  knowledge  from  the  independent  action  of 

object  on  subject,  yet  presupposes  their  mutual  relation  :  .  888 
Though  his  order  of  statement  disguises  this  inconsistency  .  .  388 
His '  object '  is  both  '  in '  and  '  out  of '  consciousness  •  .  389 
Which  ia  inconsistent  with  its  being  a  '  vivid  aggregate '  of  states 

of  consciousness 391 

How  does  he  make  this  '  aggregate '  into  an  '  unknowable  reality 

beyond  consciousness '  ? 892 

Only  (like  Ix>cke)  by  confusing  feeling  of  touch  with  the  judg- 
ment of  solidity  : 393 

Le.  by  tacitly  substituting  for  succession  of  feelings  an  experience 

of  cause  and  substaooe 394 

He  thus  virtually  adopts  the  idealism  of  Berkeley  and  Hume :  .  396 
Of  which  he  misunderstands  his  own  refutation :       •         .         .       398 


THE  FURST  VOLUME.  xxiii* 

FAOB 

CoaSamng  oonacioiunesa  for  which  there  is  neither  subject  nor 

object  with  that  in  which  both  are  immanent  .         •         .  398 

Thus  his  '  matter '  is  no  more  '  independent'  than  his  '  mind '  .  400 
In  truth  he  does  not  mean  '  independence,'  but  mutual  antithesis  .  401 
A.  relation  bj  no  means  derivable  from  that  between  '  yivid '  and 

•fidnt' 402 

His '  Tiyid  aggregates '  would  be  nothing  without  *  faint '  ones :  .  403 
/.<•  without  qualification  by  memory  and  inference  .  •  .  404 
He  does  not  see  this  because  he  makes  sensations  =  consciousness 

of  sensible  objects 405 

But  a  succession  of  sensations  cannot  form  an  aggregate  independ- 
ently of  a  subject        407 

Nor  does  he  really  conceire  them  as  thus  independent  .        .        •  408 

PAET  n. 

MB.   8PEN0EB  ON  THE  IKDEPENDENOE   OF  MATTES. 

Do  '  Tiyid  aggregates '  enter  at  all  into  the  objective  world  7         .  410 

Le,  is  sensation,  as  such,  an  element  in  perception  ?  •        •        •      410 

No ;  '  facts  of  feeling '  as  perceived  are  not  feelings  as  felt :  •        .411 

Not  even  the  simplest  facts,  whether  subjective,       .        •        .      412 

Or  objective,  for  the  minimum  percipihile  is  not,  and  does  not  con- 
tain, sensation        .         •         •         « 418 

A  sensation  can  have  no  parts  or  related  elements,  which  a  per- 
ceived object  must  have 414 

Nor  does  the  distinction  between  'vivid'  and  'faint '  apply  to  such 
an  object 416 

For  it  is  either  a  fact,  or  a  possibility  of  it,  and  neither  of  these 
can  be  vivid  or  fiiint 416 

Nor  is  the  act  of  perception  vivid  or  faint,  but  clear  or  not 
dear 418 

Nor  is  the  distinction  between  perceived  and  conceived  or  im- 
agined objects  that  between  vivid  and  faint      ....  419 

Is  then  the  perceived  ('  real ')  thing  identical  with  the  conceived 
('logical')? 420 

Yes,  so  &r  as  relations  to  feeling,  actual  or  possible,  constitute 
both  alike 421 

Nezty  suppose  '  matter '  to  be  something  '  beyond '  the  '  vivid 
states,'  on  which  they  depend 422 

This  indeed  is  inconsistent  with  Mr.  Spencer's  language       .         .  423 

But  when  he  speaks  of '  states  of  consciousness '  he  does  not  really 
mean  these 423 

As  appears  from  his  inconsistent  account  of  their  antecedence  and 
consequence .         •  .^^,^'l,''    .■ — -^        .  .  424 

^Univkhsity) 


ZZiv  CONTENTS  OF 

PAOB 

His  eqimvocal  use  of  '  antecedent  * 426 

It  cannot  be  both  a  cause  and  a  state  of  conscionsnefu :  .  •  427 
Wlidther  it  be  conceiyed  onlj  or  perceiyed  also  •  •  .  .  428 
States  of  consciousness  are  either  appearances  of  an  order  of 

nature  or  nothing  real 428 

The  real  world  not  being  states  of  consciousness,  is  it  (as  '  matter') 

'  independent  of  consciousness '  ? 429 

I.e.  what  is  the  '  something  else '  bj  relation  to  which  all  states  of 

consciousness  are  determined? 430 

Inconsistent  yiews  of  this  held  together  by  Mr.  Spencer  .  .431 
For  true  idealism  ego  and  non-ego  are  correlatiye  factors  of  one 

reality— thought 432 

Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  of  the  independence  of  matter  as  either  the 

source  or  manifestation  of  force 433 

A  feeling  cannot  be  an  '  impression  of  force/  unless  '  feeling '  be 

used  in  a  double  sense  : 433 

As  Mr.  Spencer  himself  seems  sometimes  to  recognise  .        .  436 

In  any  case  consciousness  is  not  changes,  but  cognition  of  them  437 
Which  cannot  be  derived  from  any  multiplication  of  feelings  .  437 
Unless  (as  by  Mr.  Spencer)  it  is  already  implied  in  them  .  .  438 
Without  this  paralogism  can  experience  of  force  be  treated  as  an 

effect  of  force  ? 439 

Three  questions  inyolyed  in  this;   ambiguously  answered  by 

physical  psychology : 440 

Of  which  (Mr.  Spencer  failing)  Mr.  Lewes  is  ihe  best  exponent       441 

PART  m. 

MB.   LEWES'  AOOOUNT  OF  EZPEBIENOE. 

Is  '  experience,'  as  defined  by  Mr.  Lewes,  a  sequence  of  psy- 
chical eyents? 442 

They  would  not  be  eyents  but  for  something  not  an  eyent :  .  443 
Nor  felt  things  but  for  something  not  a  feeling  ....  444 
Unity  of  consciousness  is  the  condition  alike  of  '  succession,'  of 

'  neural  tremors,'  and  of '  differentiation  of  feeling  '        .         .       445 
Mr.  Lewes'  account  of  'object'  partly  recognises,  partly  ignores, 

this  principle 445 

Competitiye  theories  in  his  peycholpgy 447 

His '  ideal '  aspect  of  feeling  is  either  '  actual '  feeUng,  or  a  judg- 
ment, i,e,  no  feeling  at  aU 447 

While  his  '  actual '  feeling,  if  it  is  to  be  of  the  real,  inyolyes 

'  ideal '  aspects 449 

In  fact,  he  ignores  the  distinction  between  succession  of  feelings 
and  consciousness  of  succession 440 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME.  XXV 

PAOB 

I  A  ^%fimetion  ascribed  to  feeling  is  incompatible  with  tHe  origin 
ascribed  to  it 451 

For  'feeling  of  relations'  cannot  arise  (1)  from  'grouping  of 
neural  units' 452 

Nor  (2)  from  '  the  process  of  change  in  the  relations '  of  the  cor- 
responding feelings 453 

Unless  the  process  is  already  a  processybr  a  conscioua  subject    .      454 

Thus  only  by  a  double  use  of  '  feeling '  can  the  experience  of 
ibroe  be  explained  as  a  result  of  force 455 

Can  it  be  explained  from  the  '  psychological  medium '  or  '  psycho- 
plasm'? 457 

Mr.  Lewes'  account  of '  psychoplasm ' 457 

Is  the  '  experience '  which  it  explains  experience  of  a  cosmos  ?  .      459 

*  Experience '  may  mean  sequence  of  impressions  or  connected 
consciousness  of  fiicts,  but  not  both 460 

The  psychoplasm,  as  '  neural  tremors '  and  '  groups,'  is  not  ex- 
perioioe  in  either  sense 461 

For  (1)  it  is  only  part  of  the  conditions  of  the  sequence  of  im- 
pressions         461 

And  (2)  as  the  medium  in  which  '  the  cosmos  arises,'  it  is  quite 
other  than  neural  processes 462 

This  ambiguous  account  of  *  psychoplasm '  is  really  accommodated 
to  a  preconceived  view  of  experience 468 

Two  distinct  senses  of  '  accumulation  of  feelings '     .        .        .      465 

The  consciousness  which  makes  successive  feelings  into  experi- 
ence cannot  be  '  evolved '  from  progressive  modifications  of  the 
organism 466 

They  have  nothing  in  common,  and  the  latter  would  not  be  an 
object  at  all  but  for  the  former 467 

Umm6  of  equivocations  in  the  physical  derivation  of  experience  .  468 

Transition  to  the  *  social  medium  ' 469 


PAET  IV. 

LEWES'  AOOOXTNT   OF  THE   'SOCIAL   MEDIUM.' 

Mr.  Lewes'  doctrine  of  the  '  social  medium'    .        .         .        .471 

It  implies  an  active  self-consciousness  which  he  ignores  or  re- 
jects      472 

Cen  the  function  of  '  thinking  the  world '  be  evolved  from  that 
of 'feeling' it? 472 

Only  if  feeling  is  already  fused  with  thought,  i.e.  not  reducible  to 
neural  process        .        •       ^.  • 478 

The  question  cannot  be  settled  by  comparison  of  man  with  lower 
organisms 474 


XXVi  CX)NTENTS  OF 

PAOB 

For  physiological  proceBses  are  not  continued  into  conaciooanesB, 
as  chemical  processes  are  into  life 475 

Nor  can  they  be  'uniform  antecedents'  of  consciousness,  for 
consciousness  of  an  event  is  not  itself  an  event     •        .        .      476 

True  that  we  are  conscious  of  objects  in  an  order,  in  which  each 
is  determined  by  the  preceding 477 

But  this  order  does  not  belong  to  or  determine  the  matter  of 
which  we  are  conscioua 478 

Thus  the  antecedents  to  a  state  of  consciousness  as  an  event  tell 
us  nothing  of  it  as  oanscumsness 479 

This  statement  does  not  commit  us  to  the  '  introspective  *  method 
of  psychology 480 

The  fallacy  of  which,  in  treating  the  object  as  '  outside '  con- 
sciousness, is  shared  by  the  '  objective '  method        .         .         .  481 

For  physiology  cannot  account  for  a  process  in  which  it  is  itself 
only  a  stage 483 

Mr.  Lewes  escapes  '  idealism '  by  making  sentience  s  neural  re- 
action and  '  feeling  of  a  world ' 484 

His 'realism' 484 

He  makes  the  object  external  to  its  own  internal  &ctor,  and  yet 
the  correlative  of  it 485 

Nor  can  '  object '  be  understood  in  any  sense  which  does  not 
imply  relation  to  consciousness 486 

Cosmic  forces  are  as  truly  *  objective'  before  the  banning  of 
sentient  life  as  after  it 487 

Equivocation  between  response  to  stimulus  and  consciousness  of 
facts.     Effect  on  his  doctrine  of  perception  ....       488 

Of  this  the  key  lies  in  his  doctrine  of  the  real.     What  then  is 
given  in 'feeling'? 489 

His  answer  implies  three  conflicting  views :  (1)  The  real  ==  the 
external  as  external 491 

How,  then,  can  sensation  be  like  the  real  ?   Only  if  he  makes  (2) 
the  real  =  feeling 492 

Which  again  implies  that  there  is  no  real  at  all  unless  (8)  it  = 
uniform  relations  of  feeling  •        •         .         .         .       493 

He  himself  implies  that  the  real  is  not  the  external  as  suchf  but 
as  determined  by  relation 494 

In  truth  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  externality,  but  with  interpre- 
tation of  feeling 494 

Le^  it  is  feeling,  not  as  such,  but  as  cause  or  effect  of  something 
not  felt 496 

Why  nevertheless  '  common  sense'  identifies  the  real  with  the  ex- 
ternal         498 

Mr.  Lewes  retains  this  view  along  with  a  truer  one,  which  logi- 
cally does  away  with  it 499 


THE  FIRST  VOLUME.  XXVU 

FAOB 

Effect  on  bu  aocoont  of  perception.   *  Neural  reaction '  =  '  feeling 
an  objective  world ' 500 

Why,  then,  does  be  not  identify  tbe  object  feh  with  the  exciting 
vibrationB? 501 

The  truth  is  that  his  *  perception '  is  something  quite  other  than 
^neural  reaction' 503 

View  (1)  that  perception  =  assimilation  of  object  (physical  en- 
vironment) by  subject  (sentient  organism)  ....       504 

If  assimilation  means  transference  from  without  to  within  con- 
sciousness, it  is  a  fiction 505 

[f  it  means  neural  reaction  on  stimulus,  it  is  not  assimilation  of 
an*  object' 506 

He  confuses  the  external  stimuli  with  the  permanent  relations 
between  them  and  sense ; 507 

And  revival  of  past  by  present  feeling  with  reference  of  combined 
feelings  to  one  object 508 

He  ignores  distinction  between  coincidence  of  feelings  and  infer- 
ence to  their  possible  reproduction 510 

How,  again,  can  feelings  felt  together  or  succeHsirely  be  consci- 
ousness of  an 'individual  object'?        512 

If  'individuality'  means  relation  to  sense  of  a  'here  and  now' 
qualified  by  relations  to  a  '  there  and  then '       .         •         .         .518 

In  fact,  if  the  conceptual  function  is  excluded  from  perception,  no 
object  remains  to  be  perceived 514 

What  does  Mr.  Lewes  understand  by  '  conception '  7    True  mean- 
ing of  '  abstract  general  ideas '        515 

In  what  sense  are  they  '  symbolical'? 516 

They  are  *  realised,'  not  by  reduction  to  sensations,  but  by  pro- 
duction of  sensation  under  known  conditions   .         .         .         .518 

If  they  could  be  so  reduced,  they  would  no  longer  form  part  of 
our  knowledge  of  a  world 519 

PAET  V. 
Av  Aksweb  to  Mb.  Hodgson 521 


INTBODTJCTIONS 


TO 


HUMES  TKEATKE  OF  HUMAN  NATUEE 


^ALlFORNiA;,.  -  -'' 


INTEODUCTION. 


Thbrb  is  a  view  of  the  history  of  mankind,  by  this  time  How  Ui« 
fiuniliariaed  to  Englishmen,  which  detaches  from  the  chaos  ^jf^^^ 
of  events  a  connected  series  of  ruling  actions  and  beliefs —  ihould  W 
the  achievement  of  great  men  and  great  epochs,  and  assigns  '^^^ 
to  these  in  a  special  sense  the  term  '  historical.'  AccordLig 
to  this  theory — which  indeed,  if  there  is  to  be  a  theory  of 
History  at  all,  alone  gives  the  needM  simplification — the 
mass  of  nations  must  be  regarded  as  left  in  swamps  and  shal* 
lows  ontside  the  main  stream  of  human  development.  They 
have  either  never  come  within  the  reach  of  tiie  hopes  and 
institntions  which  make  history  a  progress  instead  of  a  cycle, 
or  they  have  stiffened  these  into  a  dead  body  of  ceremony 
and  caste,  or  at  some  great  epoch  they  have  ftdled  to  discern 
the  sign  of  the  times  and  rejected  the  counsel  of  God  against 
themselves.  Thus  permanently  or  for  generations,  with  no 
principle  of  motion  but  unsatisfied  want,  without  the  assimi* 
lative  ideas  which  £rom  the  strife  of  passions  elicit  moral 
results,  they  have  trodden  the  old  round  of  war,  trade,  and 
fitetion,  adding  nothing  to  the  spiritual  heritage  of  man.  It 
would  seem  that  the  historian  need  not  trouble  himself  with 
them,  except  so  far  as  relation  to  them  determines  the  ac- 
tivily  of  the  progressive  nations. 

2.  A  corresponding  theory  may  with  some  confidence  be 
applied  to  simplify  the  history  of  philosophical  opinion.  The 
common  plan  of  seeking  this  history  in  compendia  of  the 
systems  of  philosophical  writers,  taken  in  the  gross  or  with 
no  discrimination  except  in  regard  to  time  and  popularity,  is 
mainly  to  blame  for  the  common  notion  that  metaphysical 
enquiry  is  an  endless  process  of  thi-eshing  old  straw.  Such 
enquiry  is  really  progressive,  and  has  a  real  history,  but  it  is 
a  history  represented  by  a  few  great  names.  At  rare  epochs 
there  appear  men,  or  sets  of  men,  with  the  true  speculative 

VOL.  I.  B 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Hume  the 
last  great 
Koglish 
philoao- 
pher. 


Kant  hi« 
trnesuc- 
c(«eur. 


impulse  to  begin  at  the  beginniug  and  go  to  the  end,  and 
with  the  faculty  of  discerning  the  true  point  of  departure 
which  previous  speculation  has  fixed  for  them.  The  intervals 
are  occupied  by  commentators  and  exponents  of  the  last  true 
philosopher,  if  it  has  been  his  mission  to  construct ;  if  it  has 
been  sceptical,  hj  writers  who  cannot  understand  the  fatal 
question  that  he  has  asked,  and  thus  still  dig  in  the  old  vein 
which  he  had  exhausted,  and  of  which  his  final  dilemma  had 
shown  the  bottom.  Such  an  interval  was  that  which  in  the 
growth  of  continental  philosophy  followed  on  the  epoch  of 
Leibnitz ;  an  interval  of  academic  exposition  or  formulation, 
in  which  the  system,  that  had  been  to  the  master  an  incom- 
plete enquiry,  became  in  the  hands  of  his  disciples  a  one- 
sided dogmatism.  In  the  line  of  speculation  more  dis- 
tinctively English,  a  like  rSgime  of  ^sti'enua  inertia'  has 
prevailed  since  the  time  of  Hume.  In  the  manner  of  its  un- 
profitableness, indeed,  it  has  differed  from  the  Wolfian  period 
in  Germany,  just  as  the  disinterested  scepticism  of  Hume 
differed  from  the  system-making  for  purposes  of  edification 
to  which  Leibnitz  applied  himself.  It  has  been  unprofitable, 
because  its  representatives  have  persisted  ia  philosophising 
upon  principles  which  Hume  had  pursued  to  their  legitimate 
issue  and  had  shown,  not  as  their  enemy  but  as  their  advo- 
cate, to  render  all  philosophy  futile.  Adopting  the  premises 
and  method  of  Locke,  he  cleared  them  of  all  illogical  adap- 
tations to  popular  belief,  and  experimented  with  them  on  the 
body  of  professed  knowledge,  as  one  only  could  do  who  had 
neither  any  twist  of  vice  nor  any  bias  for  doing  good,  but 
was  a  philosopher  because  he  could  not  help  it. 

8.  As  the  result  of  the  experiment,  the  method,  which 
began  with  professing  to  explain  knowledge,  showed  know- 
ledge to  be  impossible.  Hume  himself  was  perfectly  cognisant 
of  this  result,  but  his  successors  in  England  and  Scotland 
would  seem  so  far  to  have  been  unable  to  look  it  in  the  &ce. 
They  have  either  thrust  their  heads  again  into  the  bush  of 
uncriticised  belief,  or  they  have  gone  on  elaborating  Hume'« 
doctrine  of  association,  in  apparent  forgetfulness  of  Hume's 
own  proof  of  its  insu£Sciency  to  account  for  an  intelligent,  as 
opposed  to  a  merely  instinctive  or  habitual,  experience.  An 
enquiry,  however,  so  thorough  and  passionless  as  the  ^Treatise 
of  Human  Nature,'  could  not  be  in  vain ;  and  if  no  English 
athlete  had  strength  to  carry  on  the  torch,  it  was  transferred 


HUME'S  RELATION  TO  LOCKE.  3 

to  a  more  yigorous  line  in  Germany.  It  awoke  Kant,  as  he 
used  to  say,  from  his  *  dogmatic  slumber/  to  put  him  into 
that  state  of  mind  by  some  called  wonder,  by  others  doubt, 
in  which  all  true  philosophy  begins.  This  state,  with  less 
ambiguity  of  terms,  may  be  described  as  that  of  freedom 
from  presuppositions.  It  was  because  Eant,  reading  Hume 
with  the  eyes  of  Leibnitz  and  Leibnitz  with  the  eyes  of  Hume, 
was  able  to  a  great  extent  to  rid  himself  of  the  presupposi- 
tions of  both,  that  he  started  that  new  method  of  philosophy 
which,  as  elaborated  by  Hegel,  claims  to  set  man  free  from 
the  artificial  impotence  of  his  own  false  logic,  and  thus  qualify 
him  for  a  complete  interpretation  of  his  own  achievement 
in  knowledge  and  morali^.  Thus  the^^JTreatise  of  Human 
Nature*  and  the  *  Critic  of  Pure  Eeason,'.  taken  together, 
form  the  real  bridge  between  the  old  world  of  philosophy 
and  the  new.  They  are  the  essential  ^  Propsedeutik,'  without 
which  no  one  is  a  qualified  student  oC/modem  philosophy. 
The  close  correspondence  between  ti^  two  works  becomes 
more  apparent  the  more  each  is  studied.  It  is  such  as  to 
give  a  strong  presumption  that  Kant  had  studied  Hume's 
doctrine  in  its  original  and  complete  expression,  and  not 
merely  as  it  was  made  easy  in  the  ^  Essays.'  The  one  with 
full  and  reasoned  articulation  asks  the  question,  which  the 
other  with  equal  fulness  seeks  to  answer.  It  is  probably  be- 
cause the  question  in  its  complete  statement  has  been  so  little 
studied  among  us,  that  the  intellectual  necessity  of  the 
Elantian  answer  has  been  so  little  appreciated.  To  trace  the 
origm  ftuU  bring  out  the  points  of  the  question,  in  order  to 
the  exhibition  of  that  necessity,  will  be  the  object  of  the 
foUowing  .treatise.  To  do  this  thoroughly,  indeed,  would 
carry  us  back  through  Hobbes  to  Bacon.  But  as  present 
lindts  do  not  allow  of  so  long  a  journey,  we  must  be  content 
with  showing  Hume's  direct  filiation  to  Locke,  who,  indeed, 
sufficiently  gathered  up  the  results  of  the  '  empirical '  philo- 
sophy of  his  predecessors. 

4.  Such  a  task  is  very  different  from  an  ordinary  under-  BiBUncUoo 
taking  in  literary  history,  and  requires  different  treatment.  litSwy 
To  the  historian  of  literature  a  philosopher  is  interesting,  if  at  histoiyand 
all,  on  account  of  the  personal  qualities  which  make  a  great  of\,w"i^ 
writer,  and  have  a  permanent  effect  on  letters  and  general  phical  sya- 
culture.  Locke  and  Hume  undoubtedly  had  these  qualities 
and  produced  such  an  effect — an  effect  in  Locke's  case  more 

b2 


4  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

intense  apon  the  immediately  following  generations,  but  in 
Hume's  more  remarkable  as  having  reappeared  after  neai'  a 
century  of  apparent  forgetfulness.  Each,  indeed,  like  every 
true  philosopher,  was  the  mouth-piece  of  a  certain  system  of 
thought  determined  for  him  by  the  stage  at  which  he  found 
the  dialectic  movement  that  constitutes  the  progresfijoLphila* 
sophy,  but  each  gave  to  this  system  the  stamp  of  that 
personal  power  which  persuades  men.  Their  mode  of  expres- 
sion had  none  of  that  academic  or  ^  ex  cathedra '  character, 
which  has  made  Grerman  philosophy  almost  a  foreign  litera- 
ture in  the  country  of  its  birth.  They  wrote  as  citizens  and 
men  of  the  world,  anxious  (in  no  bad  sense)  for  effect ;  and 
even  when  their  conclusions  were  remote  from  popular  belief, 
still  presented  them  in  the  flesh  and  blood  of  current  terms 
used  in  the  current  senses.  It  is  not,  however,  in  their 
human  individuality  and  its  effects  upon  literature,  but  as 
the  vehicles  of  a  system  of  thought,  that  it  is  proposed  here 
to  treat  them ;  and  this  purpose  will  best  be  fulfilled  if  we 
follow  the  line  of  their  speculation  without  divergence  into 
literary  criticism  or  history,  without  remarks  either  on  the 
peculiarities  of  their  genius  or  on  any  of  the  secondary 
influences  which  affected  their  writings  or  arose  out  of  them. 
For  a  method  of  this  sort,  it  would  seem,  there  is  some  need 
among  us.  We  have  been  learning  of  late  to  know  much 
more  about  philosophers,  but  it  is  possible  for  knowledge 
about  philosophers  to  flourish  inversely  as  the  knowledge  of 
philosophy.  The  revived  interest  which  is  noticeable  in  the 
history  of  philosophy  may  be  an  indication  either  of  philo- 
sophical vigour  or  of  phUosophical  decay.  In  those  whom 
intellectual  indolence,  or  a  misunderstood  and  disavowed 
metaphysic,  has  landed  in  scepticism  there  often  survives  a 
curiosity  about  the  literary  history  of  philosophy,  and  the 
writings  which  this  curiosity  produces  tend  further  to  spread 
the  notion  that  philosophy  is  a  matter  about  which  there 
has  been  much  guessing  by  great  intellects,  but  no  definite 
truth  is  to  be  attained.  It  is  otherwise  with  those  who  aee  in 
philosophy  a  progressive  effort  towards  a  fuUy-articul^ted 
conception  of  the  world  as  rational.  To  them  its  past  history 
is  of  interest  as  representing  steps  in  this  progress  which 
have  already  been  taken  for  us,  and  which,  if  we  will  make 
them  our  own,  carry  us  so  far  on  onr  way  towards  the  freedom 
of  perfect  understanding;  while  to  ignore  them   is  not  t<% 


VALUE  OF  THEIR  STUDY.  6 

retain  to  the  simplicity  of  a  pre-philosopliic  age,  but  to  con- 
demn onrselyes  to  grope  in  the  maze  of  ^cultivated  opinion/ 
itself  the  confused  result  of  those  past  systems  of  thought 
which  Ve  will  not  trouble  ourselves  to  think  out. 

5.  The  value  of  that  system  of  thought,  which  found  its  Object  of 
clearest  expression  in  Hume,  lies  in  its  being  an  eflFort  to  think  ^q^®°^ 
to  their  logical  issue  certain  notions  which  since  then  have 
beoome^commonplaces  with  educated  Englishmen,  but  which, 
for  that  reason,  we  must  detach  ourselves  from  popular  con- 
troversy to  appreciate,  rightly.    We  are  familiar  enough  with 
these  in  the  form  to  which  adaptation  to  the  needs  of  plausi- 
biliiy  has  gradually  reduced  them,  but  because  we  do  not 
think  them  out  with  the  consistency  of  their  original  ex- 
ponents, we  miss  their  true  value.    They  do  not  carry  us, 
as  they  will  do  if  we  restore  their  original  significance,  by  an 
inteUectual  necessity  to  those  truer  notions  which,  in  fact, 
have  been  their-  sequel  in  the  development  of  philosophy,  but 
have  not  yet  found  their  way  into  the  *  culture '  of  our  time. 
An  attempt  'to  restore  their  value,  however,  if  this  be  the 
right  view  of  its  nature,  cannot  but  seem  at  first  sight  invi<^ 
dious.     It  will  seem  as  if,  while  we  talk  of  their  value,  we 
were  impertinently  trying  to  'pull  them  to  pieces.'    But 
those  who  understand  the  difference  between  philosophical 
fidlures,  which  are  so  because  they  are  anachronisms,  and 
those  which  in  their  failure  have  brought  out  a  new  truth 
and  compelled  a  step  forward  in  the  progress  of  thought,  will 
understand  that  a  process,  which  looks  like  pulling  a  great 
philosopher  to  pieces,  may  be  the  true   way  of  showing 
reverence  for  his  greatness.      It  is  a  Pharisaical  way  of 
building  the  sepulchres  of  philosophers  to  profess  their  doc- 
trine or  extol  their  genius  without  making  their  spirit  our 
own.    The  genius  of  Locke  and  Hume  was  their  readiness 
to  foUow  the  lead  of  Ideas :  their  spirit  was  the  spirit  of 
Rationalism — the  spirit  which,  however  baffled  and  forced 
into  inconsistent  admissions,  is  still  governed  by  the  faith 
that  all  things  may  ultimately  be  understood.     We  best  do 
reverence  to  their  genius,  we  most  truly  appropriate  their 
spirit,  in  so  exploring  the  difficulties  to  which  their  enquiry 
led,  as  to  find  in  them  the  suggestion  of  a  theory  which  may 
help  us  to  walk  firmly  where  they  stumbled  and  fell. 

6.  About  Locke,  as  about  every  other  philosopher,  the  ^^il^ 
essential  questions  are.  What  was  his  problem,  and  what  was  and 

method. 


GENERAL  EnHODUCTlON. 


His  notion 
of  the 
'  thinking 
thing.' 


This  he 
will  pas- 
sively ob- 
servs. 


his  method?  Locke,  as  a  man  of  business,  gives  us  the 
answers  at  starting.  His  problem  was  the  origin  of  *  ideas' 
in  the  individual  man,  and  their,  connection  as  constituting 
knowledge :  his  method  that  of  simply  ^  looking  into  his  ovni 
understanding  and  seeing  how  it  wrought.'  These  answers 
commend  themselves  to  common  sense,  and  still  form  the 
text  of  popular  psychology.  If  its  confidence  in  their  value, 
as  explained  by  Locke,  is  at  all  beginning  to  be  shaken,  this 
is  not  because,  according  to  a  strict  logical  development, 
they  issued  in  Hume's  unanswered  scepticism,  which  was  too 
subtle  for  popular  effect,  but  because  they  are  now  open  to  a 
rougher  battery  from  the  physiologists.  Oar  concern  at 
present  is  merely  to  show  their  precise  meaning,  and  the 
difficulties  which  according  to  this  meaning  they  involve. 

7.  There  are  two  propositions  on  which  Locke  is  constantly 
insisting :  one,  that  the  object  of  his  investigation  is  hds  awn 
mind ;  the  other,  that  his  attitude  towards  this  object  is  that 
of  mere  observation.  He  speaks  of  his  own  mind,  it  is  to  be 
noticed,  just  as  he  might  of  his  own  body*  It  meant  some- 
thing bom  with,  and  dependent  on,  the  particular  animal 
organism  that  first  saw  the  light  at  Wrington  on  a  particular 
day  in  1632.  It  was  as  exclusive  of  other  minds  as  his  body 
of  other  bodies,  and  he  could  only  infer  a  resemblance  be- 
tween them  and  it.  With  all  his  animosity  to  the  coarse 
spiritualism  of  the  doctrine  of  innate  ideas,  he  was  the  victim 
of  the  same  notion  which  gave  that  doctrine  its  falsehood  and 
grotesijueness.  He,  just  as  much  as  the  untutored  Cartesian, 
regarded  the  ^  minds '  of  different  men  as  so  many  different 
things ;  and  his  refutation  of  the  objectionable  hypothesis 
proceeds  wholly  fi^m  this  view.  Whether  the  mind  is  put 
complete  into  the  body,  or  is  bom  and  grows  with  it ;  vrhether 
it  has  certain  characters  stamped  upon  it  to  begin  with,  or 
receives  all  its  ideas  through  the  senses ;  whether  it  is  simple 
and  therefore  indiscerptible,  or  compound  and  therefore 
perishable — all  these  questions  to  Locke,  as  to  his  opponents, 
concern  a  multitude  of  ^  thinking  things '  in  him  and  them, 
merely  individual,  but  happening  to  be  pretty  much  alike. 

8.  This  ^  thinking  thing,'  then,  as  he  finds  it  in  himself, 
the  philosopher,  according  to  Locke,  has  merely  and  passively 
to  observe,  in  order  to  understand  the  nature  of  knowledge. 
*  I  could  look  into  nobody's  understanding  but  my  own  to 
see  how  it  wrought,'  he  says,  but  '  I  think  the  intellectual 


LOCKFS  EBCPnaCAL  PSYCHOLOGY.  T 

bcjilHes  are  made  «&d  operate  alike  in  most  men.  But  if  it 
should  happen  not  to  be  so,  I  can  only  make  it  my  humble 
request,  in  my  own  name  and  in  the  name  of  those  that  are 
of  my  size,  who  find  their  minds  work,  reason,  and  know  in 
the  same  low  way  that  mine  does,  that  the  men  of  a  more 
happy  genius  will  show  us  the  way  of  their  nobler  flights.' — 
(Second  Letter  to  Bishop  of  Worcester.)  As  will  appear  in 
the  sequel,  it  is  from  this  imaginary  method  of  ascertaining 
the  origin  and  nature  of  knowledge  by  passive  observation  of 
what  goes  on  in  one's  own  mind  that  the  embarrassments  of 
Locke's  system  flow.  It  was  the  function  of  Hume  to  exhibit 
the  radical  flaw  in  his  master's  method  by  following  it  with 
more  than  his  master's  rigour. 

9.  As  an  observation  of  the  *  thinking  thing,'  the  *  philo-  !•  miAob. 
sophy  of  mind  '  seems  to  assume  the  character  of  a  natural  poadble^ 
science,  and  thus  at  once  acquires  definiteness,  and  if  not  cer- 
tainty, at  least  plausibility.  To  deny  the  possibility  of  such 
observation,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word,  is  for  most  men 
to  tamper  with  tiie  unquestioned  heritage  of  all  educated 
intelligence.  Hence  the  unpalatability  of  a  consistent  Posi- 
tivism ;  hence,  too,  on  the  other  side,  the  general  conviction 
that  the  Hegelian  reduction  of  Psychology  to  Metaphysics  is 
either  an  intellectual  juggle,  or  a  wilful  return  of  the  philo- 
sophy, which  psychologists  had  washed,  to  the  mire  of 
scholasticism.  It  is  the  more  important  to  ascertain  what 
the  observation  in  question  precisely  means.  What  observes, 
and  what  is  observed?  According  to  Locke  (and  empirical 
psychology  has  never  substantially  varied  the  answer)  the\ 
matter  to  be  observed  consists  for  each  man  firstiy  in  certain 
impressions  of  his  own  individual  mind,  by  which  this  mind 
from  being  a  mere  blank  has  become  furnished — by  which, 
in  other  words,  his  mind  has  become  actually  a  mind ;  and, 
secondly,  in  certain  operations,  which  the  mind,  thus  consti- 
tuted, performs  upon  the  materials  which  constitute  it.  Th^ 
observer,  all  the  while,  is  the  constituted  mind  itself.  The 
question  at  once  arises,  how  the  developed  man  can  observe 
in  himself  (and  it  is  only  to  himself,  according  to  Locke, 
that  he  can  look)  that  primitive  state  in  which  his  mind  was 
a  ^  tabula  rasa.'  In  the  first  place,  that  only  can  be  observed 
which  is  present;  and  the  state  in  question  to  the  supposed 
observer  is  past.  If  it  be  replied  that  it  is  recalled  by  me- 
mory, there  is  the  farther  objection  that  memory  only  recalli 


«  GENERAL  INTRODUOTION. 

what  has  been  preyiouslj  known,  and  how  is  a  man's  own 
primitive  consciousness,  as  yet  void  of  the  content  which  is 
supposed  to  come  to  it  through  impressions,  originall  j  known 
to  him  P  How  can  the  ^  tabula  rasa '  be  cognisant  of  itself  P 
Why  it  10.  The  cover  under  which  this  difficulty  was  hidden  from 

Mean  to.  ijQctg^  as  from  popular  psychologists  ever  since,  consists  in 
the  implicit  assumption  of  certain  ideas,  either  as  possessed 
by  or  acting  upon  the  mind  in  the  supposed  primitive  state, 
which  are  yet  held  to  be  arrived  at  by  a  gradual  process  of 
comparison,  abstraction,  and  generalisation.  This  assump- 
tion, which  renders  the  whole  system  resting  upon  the  inter- 
rogation of  consciousness  a  paralogism,  is  yet  the  condition 
of  its  apparent  possibility.  It  is  only  as  already  charged 
with  a  conte^t  which  is  yet  (and  for  the  individual,  truly) 
maintained  to  be  the  gradual  acquisition  of  experience,  that 
the  primitive  consciousness  has  any  answer  to  give  to  its 
interrogator, 
cw^of**"  ^^'  ^*  ^^  consider  the  passage  where  Locke  sums  up  his 
origin  of  theory  of  the  ^  original  of  our  ideas.'  (Book  ii.  chap.  i. 
^^^  sec.  23,  24.)  ^  Since  there  appear  not  to  be  any  ideas  in  the 
mind,  before  the  senses  have  conveyed  any  in,  I  conceive 
that  ideas  in  the  understanding  are  coeval  with  sensation ; 
which  is  such  an  impression,  made  in  some  part  of  the  body, 
as  produces  some  perception  in  the  understanding.  It  is 
about  these  impressions  made  on  our  senses  by  outward 
objects,  that  the  mind  seems  first  to  employ  itself  in  such 
operations  as  we  call  perception,  remembering,  considera- 
tion, reasoning,  &c.  In  time  the  mind  comes  to  reflect  on 
its  own  operations  about  thd  ideas  got  by  sensation,  and 
thereby  stores  itself  with  a  new  set  of  ideas,  which  I  call 
ideas  of  reflection.  These  impressions  that  are  made  on  our 
senses  by  outward  objects,  that  are  extrinsical  to  the  mind; 
and  its  own  operations,  proceeding  from  powers  intrinsical 
and  proper  to  itself,  which,  when  reflected  on  by  itself,  be- 
come also  objects  of  its  contemplation,  are,  as  I  have  said, 
the  original  of  all  knowledge.' 
Iteambi-  12.  Can  we  from  this  passage  elicit  a  distinct  account  of 
I^JvjJ^^  the  beginning  of  intelligence  ?  In  the  first  place  it  consists 
ffod  to  in  an  ^  idea,'  and  an  idea  is  elsewhere  (Introduction,  sec.  8) 
stated  to  be  '  whatsoever  is  the  object  of  the  understanding, 
when  a  man  thinks.'  But  the  primary  idea  is  an  ^  idea  of 
sensation.'     Does  this  mean  that  the  primary  idea  %8  a  sen- 


THE  METAPHOR  OF  IMPBESSION.  9 

Sfttion,  or  is  a  distinction  to  be  made  between  the  sensation 
and  the  idea  thereof?  The  passage  before  ns  would  seem  to 
impljr  sach  a  distinction.  Looking  merely  to  it,  we  should 
prolMibly  saj  that  bj  sensation  Locke  meant  *  an  impression 
or  motion  in  some  part  of  the  body ; '  by  the  idea  of  sensation 
*  a  perception  in  the  understanding,'  which  this  impression 
produces.  The  account  of  perception  itself  gives  a  different 
result.  (Book  ii.  chap.  ix.  sec.  3.)  *  Whatever  impressions 
are  made  on  the  outward  parts,  if  they  are  not  taken  notice 
of  within,  there  is  no  perception.  Fire  may  bum  our  bodies 
with  no  other  effect  than  it  does  a  billet,  unless  the  motion 
be  continued  to  the  brain,  and  there  the  sense  of  heat  or  idea 
of  pain  be  produced  in  the  mind,  wherein  consists  actual 
pereepUonJ  Here  sensation  is  identified  at  once  with  the 
idea  and  with  perception,  as  opposed  to  the  impression  on 
the  bodily  organs.'  To  confound  the  confusion  still  farther, 
in  a  passage  immediately  preceding  the  above,  ^Perception,' 
here  identified  with  the  idea  of  sensation,  has  been  distin- 
guished firom  it,  as  ^  exercised  about  it.'  ^  Perception,  as  it 
is  the  first  faculty  of  the  mind  exercised  about  our  ideas,  so 
it  is  the  first  and  simplest  idea  we  have  from  reflection.' 
Taking  Locke  at  his  word,  then,  we  find  the  beginning  of 
intelligence  to  consist  in  having  an  idea  of  sensation. 
This  idea,  however,  we  perceive,  and  to  perceive  is  to  have 
an  idea ;  i.e.  to  have  an  idea  of  an  idea  of  sensation.  But 
of  perception  again  we  have  a  simple  or  primitive  idea. 
Therefore  the  beginning  of  intelligence  consists  in  having  an 
idea  of  an  idea  of  an  idea  of  sensation. 

13.  By  insisting  on  Locke's  account  of  the  relation  between  (5)  In  n- 
the  ideas  of  sensation  and  those  of  reflection  we  might  be  ^^^f 
brought  to  a  different  but  not  more  luminous  conclusion.    In  reflection. 
the  passages  quoted  above,  where  this  relation  is  most  fully 
spoken  of,  it  appears  that  the  latter  are  essentially  sequent 
to  those  of  sensation.     ^  In  time  the  mind  comes  to  reflect  on 
its  own  operations,  about  the  ideas  got  by  sensation,  and 
thereby  stores  itself  with  a  new  set  of  ideas,  which  I  call 
ideas  of  reflection.'     Of  these  only  two  are  primary  and  ori- 

■  Cf.  Book  n.  chap.  ziz.  sec  1.    'The  thinking,  famishes  the  mind   with  a 

pere^tiom,  which  aetnAllj  aocompanies  distinct  idea  which  we  call  senscUiou  ; 

and  IS  annexed  to  any  impression  on  the  which  is,  as  it  were,  the  actual  entrance 

body,  made  hj  an  eztamal  objec^  being  of  any  idea  into  the  nndemtanding  by 

^isrinfit  from  all  other  modifications  of  the  senses.' 


10  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

g^inal  (Book  n.  c.  xxi.  sec.  73)9yiz.  motivitj  or  power  otmoving^ 
with  which  we  are  not  at  present  concerned,  and  perceptivity 
or  power  of  perception.  But  according  to  Locke,  as  we  have 
seen,  there  cannot  be  any,  the  simplest,  idea  of  sensation 
without  perception.  If,  then,  the  idea  of  perception  is 
only  given  later  and  upon  reflection,  we  must  suppose  per- 
ception to  take  place  without  any  idea  of  it.  But  with  Locke 
to  have  an  idea  and  to  perceive  are  equivalent  terms.  We 
must  thus  conclude  that  the  beginning  of  knowledge  is  an 
unperceived  perception,  which  is  against  his  express  state- 
ment elsewhere  (Book  ii.  c.  xxviL  sec.  9),  that  it  is  *  impos- 
sible for  any  one  to  perceive  without  perceiving  that  he  does 
perceive.* 
Wliat  is  14.  Meanwhile  a  perpetual  equivocation  is  kept  up  between 

^DNM^f  a  supposed  impression  on  the  ^outward parts,'  and  a  supposed 
impression  on  the  ^  tablet  of  the  mind.'  It  is  not  tixe  im- 
pression upon,  or  a  motion  in,  the  outward  parts,  as  Locke 
admits,  that  constitutes  the  idea  of  sensation.  It  is  not  an 
agitation  in  the  tympanum  of  the  ear,  or  a  picture  on  the 
retina  of  the  eye,  that  we  are  conscious  of  when  we  see  a 
sight  or  hear  a  sound.'  The  motion  or  impression,  however, 
has  only,  as  he  seems  to  suppose,  to  be  *  continued  to  the 
brain/  and  it  becomes  an  idea  of  sensation.  Notwithstand- 
ing the  rough  line  of  distinction  between  soul  and  body, 
which  he  draws  elsewhere,  his  theory  was  practically 
governed  by  the  supposition  of  a  cerebral  something,  in 
which,  as  in  a  third  equivocal  tablet,  the  imaginary  mental 
and  bodily  tablets  are  blended.  If,  however,  the  idea  of  sen- 
sation, as  an  object  of  the  understanding  when  a  man  thinks, 
differs  absolutely  from  ^  a  motion  of  the  outward  parts,'  it 
does  so  no  less  absolutely,  however  language  and  metaphor 
may  disguise  the  difference,  from  such  motion  as  ^  continued 
to  the  brain.'  An  instructed  man,  doubtless,  may  come  to 
think  about  a  motion  in  his  brain,  as  about  a  motion  of  the 
earth  round  the  sun,  but  to  speak  of  such  motion  as  an  idea 
of  sensation  or  an  immediate  object  of  intelligent  sense,  is  to 
confiise  between  the  object  of  consciousness  and  a  possible 
physical  theory  of  the  conditions  of  that  consciousness.   It  is 

>  Ct  I<ocke*B  own  statement  (Book  ideas ;  and  two  ideas  so  different  and 

m.  It.  sec  10).    *The  canse  of  anj  distant  one  firom  another,  that  no  two 

sensation,  and  the  sensation  itself,  in  aU  ean  be  more  so.* 
the  simple  ideas  of  one  sense,  are  two 


WHAT  IS  THE  'TABULA  RASA'?  11 

only,  however,  by  such  an  equivocation  that  any  idea,  accord- 
ing to  Locke's  account  of  the  idea,  can  be  described  as  an 
^  impression '  at  all,  or  that  the  representation  of  the  mind  as 
a  tablet,  whether  bom  blank  or  with  characters  stamped  on 
it,  has  even  an  apparent  meaning.  A  metaphor,  interpreted 
as  a  fact,  becomes  the  basis  of  his  philosophical  system. 

15.  As  applied  to  the  ideas  of  reflection,  indeed,  the  meta-  Does  tho 
phor  loses  even  its  plausibility.     In  its  application  to  the  P'^dinaiw 
ideas  of  sensation  it  gains  popular  acceptance  from  the  ready  sions  on 
confusion  of  thought  and  matter  in  the  imaginary  cerebral  ^^^^^ 
tablet,  and  the  supposition  of  actual  impact  upon  this  by 

*  outward  things.'  But  in  the  case  of  ideas  of  reflection,  it  is 
the  mind  that  at  once  gives  and  takes  the  impression.  It 
mast  be  supposed,  that  is,  to  make  impressions  on  itself. 
Trhere  is  the  further  difficulty  that  as  perception  is  necessary 
in  order  to  give  an  idea  of  sensation,  the  impress  of  percep- 
tion must  be  taken  by  the  mind  in  its  earliest  receptivity ; 
or,  in  other  words,  it  must  impress  itself  while  still  a  blank, 
still  void  of  any  *  furniture  *  wherewith  to  make  the  impres- 
jion.  There  is  no  escape  fi'om  this  result  unless  we  suppose 
perception  to  precede  the  idea  of  it  by  some  interval  of  time, 
which  lands  us,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  counter  difficulty  of 
supposing  an  unperceived  perception.  Locke  disguises  the 
difficuliy  from  himself  and  his  reader  by  constantly  shifting 
both  the  receptive  subject  and  the  impressive  matter.  We 
find  the  *  tablet '  perpetually  receding.  First  it  is  the  *  out- 
ward part '  or  bodily  organ.  Then  it  is  the  brain,  to  which 
the  impression  received  by  the  outward  part  must  somehow 
be  continued,  in  order  to  produce  sensation.  Then  it  is  the 
perceptive  mind,  which  takes  an  impression  of  the  sensation 
or  has  an  idea  of  it.  Finally,  it  is  the  reflective  mind,  upon 
which  in  turn  the  perceptive  mind  makes  impressions.  But 
the  hasty  reader,  when  he  is  told  that  the  mind  is  passively 
impressed  with  ideas  of  reflection,  is  apt  to  forget  that  the 
matter  which  thus  impresses  it  is,  according  to  Locke's  show- 
ing, simply  its  perceptive,  i.e.  its  passive,  self*. 

16.  The  real  source  of  these  embarrassments  in  Locke's  Sonroe  of 
theory,  it  must  be  noted,  lies  in  the  attempt  to  make  the  in-  ^J^^**' 
dividual  consciousness  give  an  answer  to  its  interrogator  as 

to  the  beginning  of  knowledge.  The  individual  looking  back 
on  an  imaginary  earliest  experience  pronounces  himself  in 
that  experience  to  have  been  simply  sensitive  and  passive. 


12  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

xije  But  by  this  he  means  consciously  sensitive    of  somethditg 

•simple  and  coiisciously  passive  m  relation  to  something.  That  is,  he 
Locke  de-  s^ipposes  the  primitive  experience  to  have  involved  conscions- 
BcribeB  it,  ness  of  a  self  on  the  one  hand  and  of  a  thing  on  the  other, 
plex**^  as  well  as  of  a  relation  between  the  two.  In  the  *idea  of 
of  sub-  sensation'  as  Locke  conceived  it,  snch  a  consciousness  is 
fSation.  clearly  implied,  notwithstanding  his  confusion  of  terms.  The 
idea  is  a  perception,  or  consciousness  of  a  thing^  as  opposed 
to  a  sensation  proper  or  affection  of  the  bodily  organs.  Of 
the  perception,  again,  there  is  an  idea,  i.e.  a  consciousness 
by  the  man,  in  the  perception,  of  himself  in  negative  relation 
to  the  thing  that  is  his  object,  and  this  consciousness  (if  we 
would  make  Locke  consistent  in  excluding  an  unperceived 
perception)  must  be  taken  to  go  along  with  the  perceptive 
act  itself.  No  less  than  this  indeed  can  be  involved  in  any 
act  that  is  to  be  the  beginning  of  knowledge  at  all.  It  is  the 
minimum  of  possible  thought  or  intelligence,  and  the  think- 
ing man,  looking  for  this  beginning  in  the  earliest  experience 
of  the  individual  human  animal,  must  needs  find  it  there. 
But  this  meai)^  no  less  than  that  he  is  finding  there  already 
the  conceptions  of  substance  and  relation.  Hence  a  double 
contradiction :  firstly,  a  contradiction  between  the  primari- 
ness  of  self-conscious  cognisance  of  a  thing,  as  the  beginning 
of  possible  knowledge,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  primariness 
of  animal  sensation  in  the  history  of  the  individual  man  on 
the  other ;  secondly,  a  contradiction  between  the  primariness 
in  knowledge  of  the  ideas  of  substance  and  relation,  and  the 
seemingly  gradual  attainment  of  th(se  *  abstractions  *  by  the 
individual  intellect.  The  former  oi  these  contradictions  is 
blurred  by  Locke  in  the  two  main  confusions  which  we  have 
so  far  noticed :  (a)  the  confusion  between  sensation  proper 
and  perception,  which  is  covered  under  the  phrase  *  idea  of 
sensation ; '  a  phrase  which,  if  sensation  means  the  fibrst  act  of 
intelligence,  is  pleonastic,  and  if  it  means  the  ^  motion  of  the 
outward  parts  continued  to  the  brain,'  is  unmeaning ;  and  (fe) 
the  confusion  between  the  physical  affection  of  the  brain  and 
the  act  of  the  self-conscious  subject,  covered  under  the  equi- 
vocal metaphor  of  impression.  The  latter  contradiction,  that 
concerning  the  ideas  of  substance  and  relation,  has  to  be 
further  considered. 
TODtia^  17.  It  is  not  difficult  to  show  that  to  have  a  simple  idea, 
tion  is  dis-  accordiug  to  Locke's  account  of  it,  means  to  have  already  the 

^iBed. 


USE  OF  THE  TERM  'IDEA.'  13 

eonoeption  of  substance  and  relation,  which  are  yet  according 
to  him  ^  complex  and  derived  ideas,'  '  the  workmanship  of 
the  mind'  in  opposition  to  its  original  material,  the  result 
of  its  action  in  opposition  to  what  is  given  it  as  passive* 
The  equivocation  in  terms  under  which  this  contradiction 
is  generally  covered  is  that  between  ^  idea '  and  *  quality.' 
'  Whatever  the  mind  perceives  in  itself,  or  is  the  immediate 
object  of  perception,  thought,  or  understanding,  that  I  call 
idea ;  and  the  power  to  produce  that  idea  I  call  quality  of  the 
subject  wherein  that  power  is.  Thus  a  snowball  having 
power  to  produce  in  us  the  ideas  of  white,  cold,  and  round, 
the  powers  to  produce  these  ideas  in  us,  as  they  are  in  the 
snowball,  I  call  qualities ;  and  as  they  are  sensations  or  per- 
ceptions in  our  understandings,  I  call  them  ideas;  which 
ideas,  if  I  speak  of  sometimes  as  in  the  things  themselves,  I 
would  be  understood  to  mean  those  qualities  in  the  object 
which  produce  them  in  us.'     (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec.  8.) 

18.  An  equivocation  is  not  the  less  so  because  it  is  an*  Locke » 
nounced.     It  is  just  because  Locke  allows  himself  at  his  to^^nff^' 
convenience  to  interchange  the  terms  *  idea '  and  *  quality '  ing '  idea 
that  his  doctrine  is  at  once  so  plausible  and  so  hollow.     The  f^^]j^  , 
essential  question  is  whether  the  ^simple  idea,'  as  the  original  and  its  ' 
of  knowledge,  is  on  the  one  hand  a  mere  feeling,  or  on  the  ^«<^^- 
other  a  thing  or  quality  of  a  thing.     This  question  is  the 
crux  of  empirical  psychology.    Adopting  the  one  alternative, 
we  have  to  &Lce  the  difficulty  of  the  genesis  of  knowledge,  as 
an  apprehension  of  the  real,  out  of  mere  feeling ;  adopting 
the  other,  we  virtually  endow  the  nascent  intelligence  with 
the  conception  of  substance.     By  playing  fast  and  loose  with 
Mdea'  and  'quality,'  Locke  disguised  the  dilemma  from 
himself.     Here  again  the  metaphor  of  Impression  did  him 
yeoman's  service.    The  idea,  or  *  immediate  object  of  thought,' 
being  confused  with  the  affection  of  the  sensitive  organs,  and 
this  again  being  accounted  for  as  the  result  of  actual  impact, 
it  was  easy  to  represent  the  idea  itself  as  caused  by  the 
action  of  an  outward  body  on  the  '  mental  tablet.'    Thus 
Locke  speaks  of  the  *  objects  of  our  senses  obtruding  their 
particular  ideas  on  our  minds,  whether  we  will  or  no.' 
(Book  n.  chap.  i.  sec.  25.)     This  sentence  holds  in  solution  an 
assumption  and  two  fallacies.     The  assumption  (with  which 
we  have  no  further  concern  here)  is  the  physical  theory  that 
matter  affects  the  sensitive  organs    in    the  way  of  actunl 


14^  GENEIIAL  INTRODUOTION. 

impact.  Of  the  fallacies,  one  is  the  confiision  between  this 
affection  and  the  idea  of  which  it  is  the  occasion  to  the  indi« 
vidual ;  the  other  is  the  implication  that  this  idea,  as  such, 
in  its  prime  simplicity,  recognises  itself  as  the  result  of,  and 
refers  itself  as  a  quality  to,  the  matter  supposed  to  cause 
it.  This  recognition  and  reference,  it  is  clearly  implied,  are 
involved  in  the  idea  itself,  not  merely  made  by  the  philo- 
sopher theorising  it.  Otherwise  the  *  obtrusion  *  would  be 
described  as  of  a  property  or  effect,  not  of  an  idea,  which 
means,  it  must  be  remembered,  the  object  of  consciousness 
just  as  the  object  of  consciousness.  Of  the  same  purport  is 
the  statement  that  ^  the  mind  is  fomished  with  simple  ideas 
as  they  are  found  in  exterior  things.'  (Book  ii.  chap,  xziii. 
sec.  1.)  It  only  requires  a  moment's  consideration,  indeed, 
to  see  that  the  beginning  of  consciousness  cannot  be  a  phy- 
sical theory,  which,  however  true  it  may  be  and  however 
natural  it  may  have  become  to  us,  involves  not  only  the  com- 
plex conception  of  material  impact,  but  the  application  of 
this  to  a  case  having  no  palpable  likeness  to  it.  But  the 
'  interrogator  of  consciousness '  finds  in  its  primitive  state 
just  what  he  puts  there,  and  thus  Locke,  with  all  his  pains 
*  to  set  his  mind  at  a  distance  from  itself,'  involuntarily  sup- 
poses it,  in  the  first  element  of  intelligence,  to  '  report '  that 
action  of  matter  upon  itself,  which,  as  the  result  of  a  &miliar 
theory — involving  not  merely  the  conceptions  of  substance, 
power,  and  relation,  but  special  qualifications  of  these — it 
reports  to  the  educated  man. 
Primaiy  19.  This  will  appear  more  clearly  upon  an  examination  ot 

il^ndRiT  ^^^  doctrine  of  *  the  ideas  of  primary  and  secondary  qualities 
qualities  of  of  bodies.'  The  distinction  between  them  he  states  as  follows. 
^^-  The  primary  qualities  of  bodies  are  *  the  bulk,  figure,  number, 
situation,  motion,  and  rest  of  their  solid  parts ;  these  are  in 
them,  whether  w/B  perceive  them  or  no;  and  when  they  are 
of  that  size  that  we  can  discover  them,  we  have  by  these  aji 
idea  of  the  thing  as  it  is  in  itself.'  .  .  •  Thus  ^  the  ideas 
of  primary  qualities  are  resemblances  of  them,  and  their 
patterns  do  really  exist  in  the  bodies  themselves.  But  the 
ideas  produced  in  us  by  the  secondary  qualities  have  no  re- 
semblance of  them  at  all.  There  is  nothing  like  them  exists 
ing  in  the  bodies  themselves.  They  are  in  the  bodies,  we 
denominate  from  them,  only  a  power  to  produce  these  sensa- 
tions in  us ;  and  what  is  sweet,  blue,  or  warm  in  idea  is  but 


REPORTS  OF  THE  SENSES  16 

the  certain  bulk,  figQi*e,  and  motion  of  the  insensible  parts 
in  the  bodies  themselves  which  we  call  so/  This  power  is 
then  explained  to  be  of  two  sorts :  (a)  '  The  power  that  is  in 
any  body,  by  reason  of  its  insensible  primary  qualities,  to 
operate  after  a  peculiar  manner  on  any  of  our  senses,  and 
thereby  produce  in  us  the  different  ideas  of  several  colours, 
sounds,  smells,  tastes,  &c.  These  are  usually  called  sensible 
qualities,  (b)  The  power  that  is  in  any  body,  by  reason  of  the 
particular  constitution  of  its  primary  qualities,  to  make  such 
a  change  in  the  bulk,  figure,  texture,  and  motion  of  another 
body,  as  to  make  it  operate  differentiy  on  our  senses  from 
what  it  did  before.  Thus  the  sun  has  a  power  to  make  wax 
white,  and  fire  to  make  lead  fiaid.  These  are  usually  called 
powers.'     (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec.  15,  23.) 

20.  What  we  have  here  is  a  theory  of  the  causes  of  simple  *  Simple 
ideas ;  but  we  shall  find  Locke  constantly  representing  this  '^j,^ 
theory  as  a  simple  idea  itself,  or  the  simple  idea  as  involving  as  inyolT- 
this  theory.     By  this  unconscious  device  he  is  enabled  readily  jj|5  » 

to  exhibit  the  genesis  of  knowledge  out  of  ^  simple  ideas,'  iu  own 
but  it  is  at  the  cost  of  converting  these  into  *  creations  of  the  ^^■®- 
mind,'  which  with  him  are  the  antitheses  of  *  facts'  or 
^reality.'  The  process  of  conversion  takes  a  different  form 
as  applied  respectively  to  the  ideas  of  primary  and  to  those 
of  secondary  qualities.  We  propose  to  foDow  it  in  the  latter 
application  first. 

21.  The  simple  idea  caused  by  a  quality  he  calls  the  idea  phnuM  in 
of  that  quality.     Under  cover  of  this  phrase,  he  not  only  ^'^^^^^ 
identifies  the  idea  of  a  primary  quality  with  the  quality  itself  "  '™^  * 
of  which  he  supposes  it  to  be  a  copy,  but  he  also  habitually 
regards  the  idea  of  a  secondary  quality  as  the  consciousness 

of  a  quality  of  a  thing^  though  under  warning  that  the  quality 
as  it  is  to  consciousness  is  not  as  it  is  in  the  thing.  This  re- 
servation rather  adds  to  the  confusion.  There  are  in  fiEkct,  ac- 
cording to  Locke,  as  appears  from  his  distinction  between 
the  '  nominal'  and  ^real  essence,'  two  different  things  denoted 
by  every  common  noun ;  the  thing  as  it  is  in  itself  or  in 
nature,  and  the  thing  as  it  is  for  consciousness.  The  former 
IS  the  thing  as  constituted  by  a  certain  configuration  of  par- 
ticles, which  is  only  an  object  for  the  physical  philosopher, 
and  never  fully  cognisable  even  by  him  ;  ^  the  latter  is  the 

■  Thb  diitinetion  is  more  fally  tzeated  below,  pangnphi  88,  &c 


16  GENERAL  mTRODUCTION. 

thing  as  we  see  and  hear  and  smell  it.  Now  to  a  thing  in 
this  latter  sense,  according  to  Locke,  such  a  simple  idea  as 
to  the  philosopher  is  one  of  a  secondary  quality  (i.e.not  a  copy, 
but  an  effect,  of  something  in  a  body),  is  already  in  the 
origin  of  knowledge  referred  as  a  quality,  though  without 
distinction  of  primary  and  secondary.  He  does  not  indeed 
state  this  in  so  many  words.  To  have  done  so  might  have 
forced  him  to  reconsider  his  doctrine  of  the  mere  passivity 
of  the  mind  in  respect  of  simple  ideas.  But  it  is  implied  in 
his  constant  use  of  such  phrases  as  ^  reports  of  the  senses,* 
*  inlet  through  the  senses ' — which  have  no  meaning  unless 
something  is  reported,  something  let  in — and  in  the  familiar 
comparison  of  the  understanding  to  a  *  closet,  wholly  shut 
from-  light,  with  only  some  little  opening  left,  to  let  in 
external  visible  resemblances,  or  ideas,  of  things  without.' 
(Book  II.  chap.  xi.  sec.  17.) 
FeeliDff  22.  Phraseology  of  this  kind,  the  standing  heritage  of  the 

Md  felt  philosophy  which  seeks  the  origin  of  knowledge  in  sensation, 
fionftued.  assumes  that  the  individual  sensation  is  from  the  first  con- 
sciously representative ;  that  it  is  more  than  what  it  is  simply 
in  itself — fleeting,  momentary,  unnameable  (because,  while  we 
name  it,  it  has  become  another),  and  for  the  same  reason  un- 
knowable, the  very  negation  of  knowability ;  that  it  shows  the 
presence  of  something,  whether  this  be  a  *body '  to  which  it  is 
referred  as  a  quality,  or  a  mind  of  which  it  is  a  modification, 
or  be  ultimately  reduced  to  the  permanent  conditions  of  its 
own  possibility.  This  assumption  for  the  present  has  merely 
to  be  pointed  out ;  its  legitimacy  need  not  be  discussed.  Nor 
need  we  now  discuss  the  attempts  that  have  been  made  since 
Locke  to  show  that  mere  sensations,  dumb  to  begin  with,  may 
yet  become  articulate  upon  repetition  and  combination;  which 
in  fact  endow  them  with  a  faculty  of  inference,  and  suppose 
that  though  primarily  they  report  nothing  beyond  themselves, 
they  yet  somehow  come  to  do  so  as  an  explanation  of  their 
own  recurrence.  The  sensational  theory  in  Locke  is  still,  so 
to  speak,  unsophisticated.  It  is  true  that,  in  concert  with 
that '  thinking  gentleman,'  Mr.  Molyneux,  he  had  satisfied 
himself  that  what  we  reckon  simple  ideas  are  often  really 
inferences  from  such  ideas  which  by  habit  have  become  in- 
stinctive ;  but  his  account  of  this  habitual  process  presupposes 
the  reference  of  sensation  to  a  thing.  *  When  we  set  before 
our  eyes  a  round  globe  of  any  uniform  colour,  it  is  certain 


DISTINCTION  BETWEEN  THE  REAL  AND  APPARENT.  17 

that  the  idea  thereby  imprinted  in  onr  mind  is  of  a  flat  circle, 
varioQslj  shadowed  with  several  degrees  of  light  and  bright- 
ness coming  to  our  eyes.  But  we  haying  by  use  been  accus- 
tomed to  perceive  what  kind  of  appearance  convex  bodies 
are  wont  to  make  in  us,  what  alterations  are  made  in  the 
reflections  of  light  by  the  difference  of  the  sensible  figures  of 
bodies ;  the  judgment  presently,  by  an  habitual  custom,  alters 
the  appearances  into  their  causes.  So  that  from  that  which 
truly  is  variety  of  colour  or  shadow,  collecting  the  figure,  it 
makes  it  pass  for  a  mark  of  figure,  and  frames  to  itself  the 
perception  of  a  convex  figure,  and  an  uniform  colour.*  (Book 
11.  chap.  ix.  sec.  8.)  The  theory  here  stated  involves  two 
assumptions,  each  inconsistent  with  the  simplicity  of  the 
simple  idea.  (a)  The  actual  impression  of  the  *  plane 
variously  coloured  *  is  supposed  to  pronounce  itself  to  be  of 
something  outward.  Once  call  the  sensation  an  impression/ 
indeed,  or  call  it  anything,  and  this  or  an  analogous  sub- 
stantiation of  it  is  implied.  It  is  only  as  thus  reporting 
something  ^  objective '  that  the  simple  idea  of  the  plane 
variously  coloured  gives  anything  to  be  corrected  by  the 
'perception  of  the  kind  of  appearance  convex  bodies  are 
wont  to  make  in  us,'  i,e.  ^  of  l^e  alterations  made  in  the  re- 
flections of  light  by  the  diffierence  of  the  sensible  figure  of 
bodies.'  This  perception,  indeed,  as  described,  is  already 
itself  just  the  instinctive  judgment  which  has  to  be  accounted  i 

for,  and  though  this  objection  might  be  met  by  a  better 
statement,  yet  no  statement  could  serve  Locke's  purpose 
which  did  not  make  assumption  {b)  that  sensations  of  light 
and  colour — *  simple  ideas  of  secondary  qualities ' — ^are  in 
the  very  beginning  of  knowledge  appeara/nceSy  if  not  of  convex 
bodies,  yet  of  bodies;  if  not  of  bodies,  yet  of  something  which 
they  reveal,  which  remains  there  while  they  pass  away. 

23.  The  same  aissumption  is  patent  in  Locke's  account  of  mu    •    ■ 
the  distinction  between  ^  real  and  fantastic,'  ^  adequate  and  idea  &8 
inadequate,'  ideas.     This  distinction  rests  upon  that  between  *  ^*^^^^ 
the  thing  as  archetype,  and  the  idea  as  the  corresponding  mere  sen- 
ectype.     Simple  ideas  he  holds  to  be  necessarily  *  real '  and  ^^^^ 
*  adequate,'  because  necessarily  answering  to  their  archetypes. 
'  Not  that  they  are  all  of  them  images  or  representations  of 
what  does  exist:     •     •     •     whiteness  and  coldness  are  no 
more  in  snow  than  pain  is :     •     •     •    yet  are  they  real  ideas 
in  us,  whereby  we  distinguish  the  qualities  that  are  really  in 

VOL.   I.  ^         ""^ 


18  GENERAL  INTRODUCnON. 

things  themselves.  For  these  several  appearances  being  de- 
signed to  be  the  marks  whereby  we  are  to  know  and 
distinguish  things  which  we  have  to  do  with,  onr  ideas  do  as 
well  serve  us  to  that  purpose,  and  are  as  real  distinguishing 
characters,  whether  they  be  only  constant  effects,  or  else 
exact  resemblances  of  something  in  the  things  themselves.' 
^  (Book  II.  chap.  xxz.  sec.  2.)  The  simple  idea,  then,  is  a 
Y mark'  or  ^  distinguishing  character,'  either  as  a  copy  or  as 
lan  effect,  of  something  other  than  itself.  Only  as  thus 
regarded,  does  the  distinction  between  real  and  fantastic 
possibly  apply  to  it.  So  too  with  the  distinction  between 
true  and  false  ideas.  As  Locke  himself  points  out,  the  simple 
idea  in  itself  is  neither  true  nor  false.  It  can  become  so  only 
as  ^  referred  to  something  extraneous  to  it.'  (Book  n.  chap, 
xxxii.  sec.  4.)  For  all  that,  he  speaks  of  simple  ideas  as 
true  and  necessarily  true,  because  *  being  barely  such  per- 
ceptions as  God  has  fitted  us  to  receive,  and  given  power  to 
external  objects  to  produce  in  us  by  established  kws  and 
ways  •  •  .  their  truth  consists  in  nothing  else  but  in 
such  appearances  as  are  produced  in  us,  and  must  be  suitable 
to  those  powers  He  has  placed  in  external  objects,  or  else 
they  could  not  be  produced  in  us.'  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxxii. 
sec.  14.)  Here  again  we  are  brought  to  the  same  point. 
The  idea  is  an  '  appeai*ance '  of  something,  necessarily  trae 
when  it  cannot  seem  to  be  the  appearance  of  anything  else 
than  that  of  which  it  is  the  appearance.  We  thus  come  to 
the  following  dilemma.  Either  the  simple  idea  is  referred  to 
a  thing,  as  its  pattern  or  its  cause,  or  it  cannot  be  regarded 
as  either  real  or  true.  If  it  is  still  objected  that  it  need  not 
be  so  referred  in  the  beginning  of  knowledge,  though  it  comes 
to  be  so  in  the  developed  intelligence,  the  answer  is  the 
further  question,  how  can  that  be  knowledge  even  in  its  most 
elementary  phase — the  phase  of  the  reception  of  simple  ideas 
— which  is  not  a  capacity  of  distinction  between  real  and 
apparent;  between  true  and  false  9  If  its  beginning  is  a  mode 
of  consciousness,  such  as  mere  sensation  would  be — ^which, 
because  excluding  all  reference,  excludes  that  reference  of 
itself  to  something  else  without  which  there  could  be  no  con« 
sciousness  of  a  distinction  between  an  ^  is '  and  an  ^  is  not,' 
and  therefore  no  true  judgment  at  all — how  can  any  repe- 
tition of  such  modes  give  such  a  judgment  P  ^ 

>  Cf.     the    ground    of    distinction      ideas;  (Book  n.  ebap^   xziz.    see.    2) 
fcetween    clearness   and    obscurity   of      *  Our  simple  ideas  are  clear  when  they 


WHAT  THE  *  SIMPLE  n)EA  '  INVOLVES.  19 

24.  The  feet  is  that  the  *  simple  idea'  with  Locke,  as  the  it  iBvolves 
beginning  of  knowledge,  is  already,  at  its  minimnm,  the  ^^^° 
judgment,  *  I  have  an  idea  diflFerent  from  other  ideas,  which  mind  and 
I  did  not  make  for  myself.*  His  confusion  of  this  judgment  ai^-*'^ 
with  sensation  is  merely  the  fundamental  confusion,  on  which  ffoiohed, 
all  empirical  psychology  rests,  between  two  essentially  dis- 
tinct questions — one  metaphysical.  What  is  the  simplest 
element  of  knowledge  P  the  other  physiological.  What  are 
the  conditions  in  the  individual  hmnan  organism  in  virtue  of 
which  it  becomes  a  vehicle  of  knowledge  ?  Though  he  failed, 
however,  to  distinguish  these  questions,  their  difEerence 
made  itself  appear  in  a  certain  divergence  between  the  second 
and  fourth  books  of  his  Essay.  So  far  we  have  limited 
pur  consideration  to  passages  in  the  second  book,  in  which 
he  treats  eo  nomine  of  ideas ;  of  simple  ideas  as  the  original 
of  knowledge,  of  complex  ones  as  formed  in  its  process. 
Here  the  physical  theory  is  predominant.  The  beginning  of 
knowledge  is  that  without  which  the  animal  is  incapable  of 
it,  viz.  sensation  regarded  as  an  impression  through  ^  animal 
spirits '  on  the  brain.  But  it  can  only  be  so  represented  be- 
cause sensation  is  identified  with  that  which  later  psychology 
distinguished  from  it  as  Perception,  and  for  which  no  phy 
sical  theory  can  account.  As  we  have  seen,  the  whole  theory 
of  this  (the  second)  book  turns  upon  the  supposition  that  the 
simple  idea  of  sensation  is  in  every  case  an  idea  of  a  sensible 
quality,  and  that  it  is  so,  not  merely  for  us,  considering  it  ex 
parte  post^  but  consciously  for  the  individual  subject,  which 
can  mean  nothing  else  than  that  it  distinguishes  itself  from, 
and  refers  itself  to,  a  thing.  Locke  himself,  indeed,  accord- 
ing to  his  plan  of  bringing  in  a  *  faculty  of  the  mind  '  when- 
ever it  is  convenient,  would  perhaps  rather  have  said  that  it 
is  so  distinguished  and  referred  *  by  the  mind.'  He  considers 
the  simple  idea  not,  as  it  truly  is,  the  mind  itself  in  a  certain 
relation,  but  a  datum  or  material  of  the  mind,  upon  which  it 
performs  certain  operations  as  upon  something  other  than 
itself,  though  all  the  while  it  is  constituted,  at  least  in  its 
actuality,  by  this  material.  Between  the  reference  of  the 
simple  idea  to  the  thing,  however,  by  itself  and  *  by  the  mind,* 

are  anch  as    the    6bjecU    themselTes,  tell  whether  an  idea  is  clear  op  not,  it 

vhence  they  are  taken,  did  op  might  in  follows  that  immediate   conedousneim 

a  well-oordOTed  sensation  op  perception,  must  tell  of  *  the  object  itself,  whence 

preaent  them.'    As  Locke  always  as-  the  idea  is  taken.' 
I  that  immediate  consciousness  can 

g3 


20  GENERAL  INTRODUCTIOX. 

there  is  no  essential  difference.  In  either  case  the  reference 
is  inconsistent  with  the  simplicity  of  the  simple  idea ;  and  if 
the  latter  expression  avoids  the  seeming  awkwardness  of 
ascribing  activity  to  the  idea,  it  yet  ascribes  it  to  the  mind 
in  that  elementary  stage  in  which,  according  to  Locke,  it  is 
merely  receptive. 
And  is  25.  So  much  for  the  theory  *  of  ideas.'    As  if,  however,  in 

to"T^»  hf  treating  of  ideas  he  had  been  treating  of  anything  eUe  than 
afterwarda  knowledge,  he  afterwards  considers  ^  knowledge '  in  a  book 
calls  ijy  itself  (the  fourth)  under  that  title,  and  here  the  question 

ledge  of  as  to  the  relation  between  idea  and  thing  comes  before  him 
idefltity.*  jn  ^  somewhat  different  shape.  According  to  his  well-known 
definition,  knowledge  is  the  perception  of  the  agreement  or 
disagreement  of  any  of  our  ideas.  The  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement may  be  of  four  sorts.  It  may  be  in  the  way  (1) 
of  identity,  (2)  of  relation,  (3)  of  co-existence,  (4)  of  real  ex- 
istence. In  his  account  of  the  last  sort  of  agreement,  it  may 
be  remarked  by  the  way,  he  departs  at  once  and  openly  from 
his  definition,  making  it  an  agreement,  not  of  idea  with  idea, 
but  of  an  idea  with  *  actual  real  existence.*  The  fatal  but 
connatural  wound  in  his  system,  which  this  inconsistency 
marks,  will  appear  more  fully  below.  For  the  present,  our 
concern  is  for  the  adjustment  of  the  definition  of  knowledge 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  simple  idea  as  the  beginning  of  know- 
ledge. According  to  the  definition,  it  cannot  be  the  simple 
idea,  as  such,  that  constitutes  this  beginning,  but  only  the 
perception  of  agreement  or  disagreement  between  simple 
ideas.  *  There  could  be  no  room,'  says  Locke  distinctly,  *for 
any  positive  knowledge  at  all,  if  we  could  not  distinguish 
any  relation  beween  our  ideas.'  (Book  iv.  chap.  i.  sec.  5.) 
Yet  in  the  very  context  where  he  makes  this  statement,  the 
perception  of  relation  is  put  as  a  distinct  kind  of  know- 
ledge apart  from  others.  In  his  account  of  the  other  kinds, 
however,  he  is  faithful  to  his  definition,  and  ti*eats  each  as  a 
perception  (i.e.  a  judgment)  of  a  relation  in  the  way  of  agree- 
ment or  disagreement.  The  primary  knowledge  is  that  of 
identity — the  knowledge  of  an  idea  as  identical  with  itself. 
^  A  man  infallibly  knows,  as  soon  as  ever  he  has  them  in  his 
mind,  that  the  ideas  he  calls  white  and  round,  are  the  very 
ideas  they  are,  and  not  other  ideas  which  he  calls  red  and 
square .'  (Book  iv.  chap.  i.  sec.  4.)  Now,  as  Hume  after- 
wards pointed  out,  identity  is  not  simple  unity.     It  cannot 


IS  IT  A  KNOWLEDGE  OF  IDENTITY?  21 

be  predicated  of  the  *  idea '  as  merely  single,  but  only  as  a  Only  as 
manifold  in  singleness.  To  speak  of  an  idea  bls  the  *  same  ?"^  **'" 
with  itself'  is  unmeaning  unless  it  mean  ^  same  with  itself  in  nHmed. 
Us  manifold  appearances-.^  i.e.  unless  the  idea  is  distinguished, 
as  an  object  existing  continuously,  from  its  present  appear- 
ance. Thus  *  the  infallible  knowledge,'  which  Locke  describes 
in  the  above  passage,  consists  in  this,  that  on  the  occurrence 
of  a  certain  ^  idea '  the  man  recognises  it  as  one,  which  at 
other  times  of  its  occurrence  he  has  called  ^white.^  Such  a 
'synthesis  of  recognition,'  however,  expressed  by  the  appli- 
cation of  a  common  term,  implies  the  reference  of  a  present 
sensation  to  a  permanent  object  of  thought,  in  this  case  the 
object  thought  under  the  term  *  white,'  so  that  the  sensation 
becomes  an  idea  of  that  object.  Were  there  no  such  objects, 
there  would  be  no  significant  names,  but  only  noises ;  and 
were  the  present  sensation  not  so  referred,  it  would  not  be 
named.  It  may  be  said  indeed  that  the  ^  permanent  object 
of  thought '  is  merely  the  instinctive  resxdt  of  a  series  of  past 
resembling  sensations,  and  that  the  common  name  is  merely 
the  register  of  tliis  result.  But  the  question  is  thus  merely 
thrown  further  back.  Unless  the  single  fleeting  sensation 
was,  to  begin  with,  fixed  and  defined  by  relation  to  and 
distinction  from  something  permanentr~in  other  words, 
unless  it  ceased  to  be  a  mere  sensation — how  did  it  happen 
that  other  sensations  were  referred  to  it,  as  difTerent  cases 
of  an  identical  phenomenon,  to  which  the  noise  suggested  by 
it  might  be  applied  as  a  sign? 

26.   This  primary  distinction  and  relation  of  the  simple  The  sam* 
idea  Locke  implicitly  acknowledges  when  he  substitutes  for  ^i^f  *^jj" 
the  simple  idea,  as  in  the  passage  last  quoted,  the  man's  an  idea  of 
knowledge  that  he  has  the  idea ;  for  such  knowledge  implies  '^^  o^^ct, 
the  distinction  of  the  idea  from  its  permanent  conscious  sub- 
ject, and  its  determination  by  that  negative  relation.*     Thus 
determined,  it  becomes  itself  a  permanent  object,  or  (which 
comes  to  the  same)  an  idea  of  an  object ;   a  phrase  which 
Locke  at  his  convenience  substitutes  for  the  mere  idea,  when- 
ever it  is  wanted  for  making  his  theory  of  knowledge  square 
with  knowledge  itself.     Once  become  such  an  object,  it  is  a 

*  Of.  tli«  paMage  in  Book  lu  chap,  tion  of  it  as  actually  there/  as  sensation 
rii.  sec.  7-  *When  ideas  are  in  our  is  different  from  thought  The  'con- 
minds,  we  consider  them  as  being  actually  sideration,  &c./  really  means  the  thought 
there.'  The  mere  'idea'  is  in  fact  es-  of  thp  '  idea'  (sensation)  as  determined 
smtiaUj  different  from  the  *  considera-  by  relation  to  the  conscious  subject. 


22 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTnON. 


made /or, 
Dot  ht/,  us, 
and  there- 
fore ac- 
cording to 
Locke 
really 
existent. 


What  did 
he  mean 
by  this? 


basis  to  which  other  sensations,  like  and  unlike,  may  be 
referred  as  differentiating  attributes.  Its  identity  becomes  a 
definite  identity. 

27.  Upon  analysis,  then,  of  Locke's  account  of  the  most 
elementary  knowledge,  the  perception  of  identity  or  agree- 
ment of  an  idea  with  itself,  we  find  that  like  the  *  simple 
idea,'  which  he  elsewhere  makes  the  beginning  of  knowledge, 
it  really  means  the  reference  of  a  sensation  to  a  conception 
of  a  permanent  object  or  subject,*  either  in  such  a  judgment 
as  *this  is  white'  (sc.  a  white  thing),  or  in  the  more  ele- 
mentary one,  *  this  is  an  object  to  me.'  In  the  latter  form 
the  judgment  represents  what  Locke  puts  as  the  conscious- 
ness, ^  I  have  an  idea,'  or  as  the  '  consideration  that  the  idea 
is  actually  there ; '  in  the  former  it  represents  what  he  calls 

*  the  knowledge  that  the  idea  which  I  have  in  my  mind  and 
which  I  call  white  is  the  very  idea  it  is,  and  not  the  idea 
which  I  call  red.'  It  is  only  because  referred^  as  above,  that 
the  sensation  is  in  Locke's  phraseology  *a  testimony'  or 

*  report '  of  something.  As  we  said  above,  his  notion  of  the 
beginning  of  knowledge  is  expressed  not  merely  in  the  formula 
^I  have  an  idea  different  from  other  ideas,'  but  with  the 
addition,  *  which  I  did  not  make  for  myself.'  *  The  simple 
idea  is  supposed  to  testify  to  something  without  that  caused 
it,  and  it  is  this  interpretation  of  it  which  makes  it  with  him 
the  ultimate  criterion  of  reality.  But  unless  it  were  at  once 
distinguished  from  and  referred  to  both  a  thing  of  which  it 
is  an  effect  and  a  subject  of  which  it  is  an  experience,  it  could 
not  in  the  first  place  testify  to  anything,  nor  secondly  to  a 
thing  as  made  for,  not  by,  the  subject.  This  brings  us,  how- 
ever, upon  Locke's  whole  theory  of  *real  existence,'  which 
requires  fuller  consideration. 

28.  It  is  a  theory,  we  must  premise,  which  is  nowhere 
explicitly  stated.  It  has  to  be  gathered  chiefly  from  those 
passages  of  the  second  book  in  which  he  treats  of  ^  complex  ' 
or  *  artificial '  ideas  in  distinction  from  simple  ones,  which 
are  necessarily  real,  and  from  the  discussion  in  the  fourth 
book  of  the  *  extent '  and  *  reality '  of  knowledge.  We  have, 
however,  to  begin  with,  in  the  enumeration  of  simple  ideas,  a 


'  For  ft  recognition  by  Locke  of  the 
correlativity  of  these  (of  which  more 
will  have  to  be  said  below)  cf.  Book  ii. 
chap,  zziii.  sec.  15.  'Whilst I  know 
by  seeing  or  hearing,  &c.,  that  there  is 


some  corporeal  being  without  me,  the 
object  of  that  sensation,  I  do  more  cer- 
tainly know  that  there  is  some  spiritual 
being  within  me  tliat  sees  and  hears.' 
*  Cf.  Book  n.  chap.  zii.  sec.  1. 


IDEA  OF  EXISTENCE.  28 

mention  of  *  existence/  as  one  of  those  *  received  alike  tlirough 
all  the  ways  of  sensation  and  reflection.'  It  is  an  idea  ^  sug- 
gested to  tiie  understanding  by  every  object  without  and  every 
idea  within.  When  ideas  are  in  our  minds,  we  consider  them 
as  being  actually  there,  as  well  as  we  consider  things  to  be 
actually  without  us;  which  is,  that  they  exist,  or  have 
existence.'     (Book  ii.  chap.  vii.  sec.  7.) 

29.  The  two  considerations  here  mentioned,  of  ^  ideas  as 
actually  in  our  minds,'  of  *  things  as  actually  without  us,'  are 
meant  severally  to  represent  the  two  ways  of  reflection  and 
sensation,  by  which  the  idea  of  existence  is  supposed  to  be 
suggested.  But  sensation,  according  to  Locke,  is  an  organ 
of  *  ideas,'  just  as  much  as  reflection.  Taking  his  doctrine 
strictly,  there  are  no  *  objects '  but  *  ideas '  to  suggest  the 
idea  of  existence,  whether  by  the  way  of  Sensation  or  by 
that  of  reflection,  and  no  ideas  that  are  not  '  in  the  mind.' 
(Book  n.  chap.  ix.  sec.  3,  &c.) 

80.  The  designation  of  the  idea  of  existence,  then,  as  EzistooM 
*  suggested  by  every  idea  within,'  covers  every  possible  sug-  ^^J^  p^ 
gestion.  It  can  mean  nothing  else  than  that  it  is  given  in  sence  of  a 
every  act  and  mode  of  consciousness ;  that  it  is  inseparable  ^•o^'^- 
from  feeling  as  such,  being  itself  at  the  same  time  a  distinct 
simple  idea.  This,  we  may  remark  by  the  way,  involves  the 
conclusion  that  every  idea  is  composite,  made  up  of  what- 
ever distinguishes  it  from  other  ideas  together  with  the  idea 
of  existence.  Of  this  idea  of  existence  itself,  however,  it  will 
be  impossible  to  say  anything  distinctive ;  for,  as  it  accom- 
panies all  possible  objects  of  consciousness,  there  will  be  no 
cases  where  it  is  absent  to  be  distinguished  from  those  where 
it  is  present.  Not  merely  will  it  be  undefinable,  as  every 
simple  idea  is ;  it  will  be  impossible  ^  to  send  a  man  to  his 
senses '  (according  to  Locke's  favourite  subterftige)  in  order 
to  know  what  it  is,  since  it  is  neither  given  in  one  sense  as 
distinct  from  another,  nor  in  all  senses  as  distinct  from  any 
other  modification  of  consciousness.  Thus  regarded,  to  treat 
it  as  a  simple  idea  alongside  of  other  simple  ideas  is  a  pal- 
pable contradiction.  It  is  the  mere  *  It  is  felt,'  the  abstrac- 
tion of  consciousness,  no  more  to  be  reckoned  as  one  among 
other  ideas  than  colour  in  general  is  to  be  co-ordinated  with 
red,  white,  and  blue.  Whether  I  smell  a  rose  in  the  summer 
or  recall  the  s*mell  in  winter ;  whether  I  see  a  horse  or  a 
ghost,  or  imagine  a  centaur  or  think  of  gravitation  or  the 


94  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

philosopher's  stone— in  every  case  alike  the  idea  or  ^  imme- 
diate object  of  the  mind '  exists.  Yet  we  find  Locke  distin- 
guishing between  real  ideas,  as  those  that  ^  have  a  conformity 
with  the  existence  of  things/  and  fantastic  ideas,  as  those 
which  have  no  snch  conformity  (Book  ii»  chap.  xxx.  sec.  1) ; 
and  again  in  the  fourth  book  (chap.  i.  sec.  7,  chap.  iii. 
sec.  21,  &c.)  he  makes  the  perception  of  the  agreement  of  an 
idea  with  existence  a  special  kind  of  knowledge,  different 
from  that  of  agreement  of  idea  with  idea ;  and  haying  done 
so,  raises  the  question  whether  we  have  such  a  knowledge  of 
existence  at  all,  and  decides  that  our  knowledge  of  it  is  yery 
narrow. 
Exiatenee  31.  How  are  Buch  a  distinction  and  such  a  question  to  be 
a»reabty.  j^^Qn^iled  with  the  attribution  of  existence  to  every  idea? 
The  answer  of  course  will  be,  that  when  he  speaks  of  ideas  as 
not  conforming  to  existence,  and  makes  knowledge  or  the 
agreement  of  ideas  with  each  other  something  different  from 
their  agreement  with  existence,  he  means  and  generally  says 

*  real  actual  existence,'  or  the  *  existence  of  things/  i.e.  an 
existence,  whatever  it  be,  which  is  opposed  to  mere  existence 
in  consciousness.  Doubtless  he  so  means,  but  this  implies 
that  upon  mere  consciousness,  or  the  simple  presence  of 
ideas,  there  has  supei*vened  a  distinction,  which  has  to  be 
accounted  for,  of  ideas  from  things  which  they  represent  on 
the  one  hand,  and  from  a  mind  of  which  they  are  affections 
on  the  other.  Even  in  the  passage  first  quoted  (Book  ii. 
chap.  vii.  sec.  7),  where  existence  is  ascribed  to  every  idea, 
on  looking  closely  we  find  this  distinction  obtruding  itself^ 
though  without  explicit  acknowledgment.  In  the  very  same 
breath,  so  to  speak,  in  which  the  idea  of  existence  is  said  to 
be  suggested  by  every  idea,  it  is  further  described  as  being 
either  of  two  considerations — either  the  consideration  of  an 
idea  as  actually  in  our  mind,  or  of  a  thing  as  actually  without 
us.  Such  considerations  at  once  imply  the  supervention  of 
that  distinction  between  ^  mind '  and  ^  thing,'  which  gives  a 
wholly  new  meaning  to  *  existence.'  They  are  not,  in  truth, 
as  Locke  supposed,  two  separate  considerations,  one  or  other 
of  which,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  interchangeable  with  the 

*  idea  of  existence.'  One  is  correlative  with  the  other,  and 
neither  is  the  same  as  simple  feeling.  Considered  as  actually 
in  the  mind,  the  feeling  is  distinguished  from*tbe  mind  as  an 
uffection  from  the  subject  thereof,  and  iust  in  virtue  of  this 


EXISTENCE  AND  REAL  EXISTENCE.  26 

diBtinctioii  is  referred  to  a  thing  as  the  cause  of  the  affectioo, 
or  becomes  representative  of  a  thing.  But  for  such  considera- 
tion there  would  for  us,  if  the  doctrine  of  ideas  means  any- 
thing, be  no  ^  thing  without  us '  at  all.  To  '  consider  things 
as  actually  without  us '  is  to  consider  them  as  causes  of  the 
ideas  in  our  mind,  and  this  is  to  have  an  idea  of  existence 
quite  different  from  mere  consciousness.  It  is  to  have  an 
idea  of  it  which  at  once  suggests  the  question  whether  the 
existence  is  real  or  apparent ;  in  other  words,  whether  the 
thing,  to  which  an  affection  of  the  mind  is  referred  as  its 
cause,  is  really  its  cause  or  no. 

32.  Between  these  two  meanings  of  existence — its  mean-  ^^^^"^ 
ing  as  interchangeable  with  simple  consciousness,  and  its  these  two 
meaning  as  reaUty — Locke  fiiled  to  distinguish.     Just  as,  J^^^°fJ|;j 
haying    announced   *  ideas '  to  be  the  sole  *  materials  of  its  con- 
knowledge,'  he  allows  himself  at  his   convenience  to  put  d»*^oM  m» 
^  things '  in  the  place  of  ideas ;  so  having  identified  existence  sented  u 
with  momentary  consciouness  or  the  simple  idea,  he  substi-  «J^«^  ^ 
tutes  for  existence  in  this  sense  realiiyy  and  in  consequence  f^^^,^ 
finds  reality  given  solely  in  the  simple  idea.    Thus  when  the 
conceptions  of  cause  or  substance,  or  relations  of  any  kind, 
come  xmder  view,  since  these  cannot  be  represented  as  given 
in  momentary  consciousness,  they  have  to  be  pronounced  not 
to  exist,   and  since  existence  is  reality,  to  be  unreal  or 
'fictions  of  the  mind.'    But  without  these  unreal  relations 
there  could  be  no  knowledge,  and  if  they  are  not  given  in 
the  elements  of  knowledge,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  they  are 
introduced,   or  to   avoid  the   appearance    of  constructing 
knowledge  out  of  the  unknown.     Given  in  the  elements  of 
knowledge,  however,  they  cannot  be,  if  these  are  simple  ideas 
or  momentary  recurrences  of  the  ^  it  is  felt.'    But  by  help  of 
Locke's  equivocation  between  the  two  meanings  of  existence, 
they  can  be  covertly  introduced  as  the  real.     Existence  is 
given  in  the  simple  idea,  existence  equals  the  real,  therefore 
the  real  is  given  in  the  simple  idea.     But  think  or  speak  of 
the  real  as  we  will,  we  find  that  it  exhibits  itself  as  substance, 
as  cause,  and  as  related  ;  i.e.  according  to  Locke  as  a  '  com- 
plex '  or  ^invented '  or  *  superinduced '  idea. 

83.  Li  the  second  book  of  his  Essay,  which  treats  of  ideas,  Yet  reality 
he  makes  the  grand  distinction  between  '  the  simple  ideas  eomplez 
which  are  all  from  things  themselves,  and  of  which  the  mind  '^»« 
can  have  no  more  or  other  than  what  are  suggested  to  it,'  and 


«  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

made  by  the  '  complex  ideas  which  are  the  workmaDship  of  the  mind/ 
the  muML  (Book  n.  chap,  xii.)  In  his  account  of  the  latter  there  are 
some  curious  cross-divisions,  but  he  finally  enumerates  them 
as  ideas  either  of  modes^  substances^  or  relations.  The  charac- 
ter of  these  ideas  he  then  proceeds  to  explain  in  the  order 
given,  one  after  the  other,  and  as  if  each  were  independent 
of  the  rest ;  though  according  to  his  own  statement  the  idea 
of  mode  presupposes  that  of  substance,  and  the  idea  of 
substance  involves  that  of  relation.  ^  Modes  I  call  such 
complex  ideas,  which,  however  compounded,  contain  not  in 
them  the  supposition  of  subsisting  by  themselves,  but  are 
considered  as  dependencies  on,  or  affections  of,  substances ; 
such  are  the  ideas  signified  by  the  words  '  triangle,'  ^  grati- 
tude,' *  murder,'  Ac.  Of  these  there  are  two  sorts.  First, 
there  are  some  which  are  only  variations  or  different  combi- 
nations of  the  same  simple  idea  without  the  mixture  of  any 
other — as  a  dozen,  or  score — which  are  nothing  but  the  ideas 
of  so  many  distinct  units  added  together;  and  these  I  call 
simple  modes,  as  being  contained  within  the  bounds  of  one 
simple  idea.  Secondly,  there  are  others  compounded  of 
simple  ideas  of  several  kinds,  put  together  to  make  one 
complex  one ;  e.  g.  beauty,  .  •  •  •  and  these  I  call  mixed 
modesJ*  (Book  n.  chap.  xii.  sees.  4,  5.)  So  soon  as  he  comes 
to  speak  more  in  detail  of  simple  modes,  he  falls  into  apparent 
contradiction  with  his  doctrine  that,  as  complex  ideas,  they 
are  the  mere  workmanship  of  the  mind.  AU  particular 
sounds  and  colours  are  simple  modes  of  the  simple  ideas  of 
sound  and  colour.  (Book  u.  chap,  xviii.  sees.  3,  4.)  Again, 
the  ideas  of  figure,  place,  distance,  as  of  all  particular  figures, 
places,  and  distances,  are  simple  modes  of  the  simple  idea  of 
space.  (Book  u.  chap,  xiii.)  To  maintain,  however,  that 
the  ideas  of  space,  sound,  or  colour  in  general  (as  simple 
ideas)  were  taken  from  things  themselves,  while  those  of 
particula/r  spaces,  sounds,  and  colours  (as  complex  ideas) 
were  'made  by  the  mind,'  was  for  Locke  impossible.  Thus 
in  the  very  next  chapter  after  that  in  which  he  has  opposed 
all  complex  ideas,  those  of  simple  modes  included,  as  made 
by  the  mind  to  all  simply  ones  as  taken  from  things  them- 
selves, he  speaks  of  simple  modes  '  either  as  found  in  things 
existing^  or  as  made  by  the  mind  within  itself.'  (Book  ii, 
chap.  xiii.  sec.  1.)  It  wa.s  not  for  Locke  to  get  over  this  con- 
fusion by  denying  the  antithesis  between  that  which  the 


KEAUTY  IMPLIES  SUBSTANCE   AND   RELATION.       27 

mind  'mak^'  and  that  which  it  'takes  from  existing  things/ 
and  for  the  present  we  must  leave  it  as  it  stands.  We  must 
fnrther  note  that  a  mode  being  considered  '  as  an  affection  of 
a  substance/  space  must  be  to  the  particular  spaces  which 
are  its  simple  modes,  as  a  substance  to  its  modifications. 
So  too  colour  to  particular  colours,  &c.,  &c.  But  the  idea  of 
a  substance  is  a  complex  idea  *  framed  by  the  mind.'  There- 
fore the  idea  of  space — at  an j  rate  such  an  idea  as  we  have  of 
it  when  we  think  of  distances,  places,  or  figures,  and  when 
else  do  we  think  of  it  at  allP — must  be  a  complex  and  arti- 
ficial idea.  But  according  to  Locke  the  idea  of  space  is 
emphatically  a  simple  idea,  given  immediately  both  by  sight 
and  touch,  concerning  which  if  a  man  enquire,  he  '  sends 
him  to  his  senses.'     (Book  ii.  chap,  v.) 

84.  These  contradictions  are  not  avoidable  blunders,  due  Such  are 
to  carelessness  or  want  of  a  clear  head  in  the  individual  ^^d  t^T- 
writer.     *  The  complex  idea  of  substance '  will  not  be  exor-  tion  which 
cised;    the  mind  will  show  its  workmanship  in  the  very  fo^^in 
elements  of  knowledge  towards  which  its  relation  seems  every  ob- 
most  passive — in  the  *  existing  things '  which  are  the  condi-  i^^iedgo, 
tions   of  its   experience  no  less  than  in  the  individual's 
conscious  reaction  upon  them.     The  interrogator  of  the 
individual  consciousness  seeks  to  know  that  consciousness, 
and  just  for  that  reason  must  find  in  it  at  every  stage  those 
formal  conceptions,  such  as  substance  and   cause,  without 
which  there  can  be  no  object  of  knowledge  at  all.     He  thus 
substantiates  sensation,  while  he  thinks  that  he  merely 
observes  it,  and  calls  it  a  sensible  thing.     Sensations,  thus 
unconsciously  transformed,  are  for  him  the  real,  the  actually 
existent.    Whatever  is  not  given  by  immediate  sense,  outer 
or  inner,  he  reckons  a  mere  'thing  of  the  mind.'    The  ideas 
of  substance  and  relation,  then,  not  being  given  by  sense, 
must  in  his  eyes  be  things  of  the  mind,  in  distinction  from 
really  existent  things.     But  speech  bewrayeth  him.    He  can- 
not state  anything  that  he  knows  save  in  terms  which  imply 
that  substance  and  relation  are  in  the  things  known ;  and 
hence  an  inevitable  obtrusion  of  *  things  of  the  mind '  in  the 
place  of  real  existence,  just  where  the  opposition  between 
them  is  being  insisted  on.    Again,  as  a  man  seems  to  observe 
consciousness  in  himself  and  others,  it  has  nothing  that  it 
has  not  received.     It  is  a  blank  to  begin  with,  but  passive  of 
that  which  is  without,  and  through  its  passivity  it  becomes 


28 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION 


informed.  If  the  ^  mind,'  then,  means  this  or  that  individnal 
consciousness,  the  things  of  the  mind  must  be  gradually  de- 
veloped from  an  original  passivity.  On  the  other  hand,  let 
anyone  try  to  know  this  original  passive  consciousness,  and 
in  it,  as  in  every  other  known  object-matter,  he  must  find 
these  things  of  the  mind,  substance  and  relations.  K  nature 
is  the  object,  he  must  find  them  in  nature ;  if  his  own  self- 
consciousness,  he  must  find  them  in  that  consciousness. 
But  while  nature  knows  not  what  is  in  herself,  self-conscious- 
ness, it  would  seem,  ex  vi  termmiy  does  know.  Therefore  not 
merely  substance  and  relation  must  be  found  in  the  original 
consciousness,  but  the  knowledge,  the  ideas,  of  them. 

35.  As  we  follow  Locke's  treatment  of  these  ideas  more  in 
detail,  we  shall  find  the  logical  see-saw,  here  accounted  for, 
appearing  with  scarcely  a  disguise.  His  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  *  complex  ideas  of  substances '  is  as  follows. 
*The  mind  being  furnished  with  a  great  number  of  the 
simple  ideas,  conveyed  in  by  the  senses,  as  they  are  found  in 
exterior  things,  or  by  reflection  on  its  own  operations,  takes 
notice  also  that  a  certain  number  of  these  simple  ideas  go 
constantly  together ;  which  being  presumed  to  belong  to  one 
thing,  and  words  being  suited  to  common  apprehensions  and 
made  use  of  for  quick  despatch,  are  called,  so  imited  in  one 
subject,  by  one  name ;  which  by  inadvertency  we  are  apt 
afterwards  to  talk  of  and  consider  as  one  simple  idea,  which 
indeed  is  a  complication  of  many  ideas  together ;  because, 
arS  I  have  said,  not  imagining  how  these  simple  ideas  can 
subsist  by  themselves,  we  accustom  ourselves  to  suppose 
some  substratum^  wherein  they  do  subsist,  and  from  which 
they  do  result ;  which  therefore  we  call  substance.^  (Book 
II.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  I.)  In  the  controversy  with  Stillingfleet, 
which  arose  out  of  this  chapter,  Locke  was  constrained 
further  to  distinguish  (as  he  certainly  did  not  do  in  the 
original  text)  between  the  ^  ideas  of  distinct  substances,  such 
as  man,  horse,'  and  the  ^  general  idea  of  substance.'  It  is  to 
ideas  of  the  former  sort  that  he  must  be  taken  to  refer  in  the 
above  passage,  when  he  speaks  of  them  as  formed  by  *  com- 
plication of  many  ideas  together,'  and  these  alone  are  complex 
in  the  strict  sense.  The  general  idea  of  substance  on  the 
other  hand,  which  like  all  general  ideas  (according  to  Locke) 
is  made  by  abstraction,  means  the  idea  of  a '  substratum 
which  wp  accustom  ourselves  to  suppose '  as  that  wherein 


LOCKE'S  ACCOUNT  OF  SUBSTANCE.  29 

the  complicated  ideas  ^  do  subsist,  and  from  which  thej  do 
result.'  This,  however,  he  regards  as  itself  one,  ^the  first 
and  chief,'  among  the  ideas  which  make  up  any  of  the  '  dis- 
tinct substances.'  (Book  u.  chap.  xii.  sec.  6.)  Nor  is  he 
faithful  to  the  distinction  between  the  general  and  the  complex. 
In  one  passage  of  the  first  letter  to  Stillingfleet,  he  distinctly 
speaks  of  the  general  idea  of  substance  as  a  '  complex  idea 
made  up  of  the  idea  of  something  plus  that  of  relation  to 
qualities. '^  Notwithstanding  this  confusion  of  terms,  however, 
he  no  doubt  had  before  him  what  seemed  a  clear  distinction 
between  the  ^  abstract  general  idea '  of  substance,  as  such,  i.e. 
of  ^  something  related  as  a  support  to  accidents,'  but  which 
does  not  include  ideas  of  any  particular  accidents,  and  the 
composite  idea  of  a  substance,  made  up  of  a  multitude  of 
simple  ideas  plus  that  of  the  something  related  to  them  as  a 
support.  We  shall  find  each  of  these  idesiS,  according  to 
Locke's  statement,  presupposing  the  other. 

86.  In  the  passage  above  quoted,  our  aptness  to  consider  The  &b- 
a  complication  of  simple  ideas,  which  we  notice  to  go  con-  ^^^ing " 
stantly  together,  as  one  simple  idea,  is  accounted  for  as  the  to  Locke  at 
result  of  a  presumption  that  they  belong  to  one  thing.    This  ^*g^J]^d 
presumption  is  again  described  in  the  words  that  ^  we  ac-  follows  the 
custom  ourselves  to  suppose  some  substratum,  wherein  they  <»™pl®^ 
do  subsist,  and  from  which  they  do  result;  which  therefore 
we  call  substance.'     Here  it  is  implied  that  the  idea  of  sub- 
stance, i.  e.  *  the  general  idea  of  something  related  as  a  sup- 
port to  accidents,'  is  one  gradually  formed  upon  observation 
of  the  regular  coincidence  of  certain  simple  ideas.     In  the 
sequel  (sec.  3  of  the  same  chapter*)  we  are  told  that  such  an 
idea — *  an  obscure  and  relative  idea  of  substance  in  general 
— being  thus  made,  we  come  to  have  the  ideas  of  particular 
sorts  of  substances  by  collecting  such  combinations  of  simple 
ideas  as  are,  by  experience  and  observation  of  men's  senses, 
taken  notice  of  to  exist  together.'     Thus  a  general  idea  of 

*  Upon  a  Yeference  to  the  chapter  on  referred  to  it,  he  opposes   it   to    the 

'oomplez  ideas'  (Book  n.  chap.  xii.)f  complex  idea,  according  to  the  stricter 

it  wiU  appear  that  the  term  is  used  in  a  Sf^nse  of  that  term.    On  the  other  hand, 

Ktricter  and   a  looser  sense.    In  the  when  he  thinks  of  it  as  *  made  up  *  of 

^ooseir  sense  it  is  not  confined  to  com-  the  idea  of  something  plus  that  of  rela- 

^(mnd  ideas,  but  in  opposition  to  simple  tion  to  qualities  (as  if  there  could  be  un 

ones  includes  those  of  relation  and  even  idea  of  something    apart  from    such 

'  abstract  general  ideas.'     When  Locke  relation),  it  seems  to  him  to  have  two 

thinks  of  Uie  general  idea  of  substance  elements,  and  therefore  to  be  complex, 

apart  fiora  the  0(HnpIication  of  accidents  '  i.  xxiii. 


80  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Bubstaiioe  haying  been  formed  by  one  gradnal  process,  ideas 
of  partictdar  sorts  of  snbstances  are  formed  by  another  and 
later  one.  But  then  the  very  same  *  collection  of  sach  com- 
binations of  simple  ideas  as  are  taken  notice  of  to  exist 
together/  which  (according  to  sec.  3)  constitutes  the  later 
process  and  follows  npon  the  formation  of  the  general  idea  of 
substance,  has  been  preyionsly  described  as  preceding  and 
conditioning  that  formation.  It  is  the  complication  of 
simple  ideas,  noticed  to  go  constantly  together,  that  (accord- 
ing to  sec.  1)  leads  to  the  '  idea  of  substance  in  general.' 
To  this  see-saw  between  the  process  preceding  and  that  fol- 
lowing the  formation  of  the  idea  in  question  must  be  added 
the  difficulty,  that  Locke's  account  makes  the  general  idea 
precede  the  particular,  which  is  against  the  whole  tenor  of 
his  doctrine  of  abstraction  as  an  operation  whereby  ^the 
mind  makes  the  particular  ideas,  receired  from  particular 
objects,  to  become  general.'  (Book  n.  chap.  xi.  sec.  9.) 
Reference  87.  It  may  be  said  perhaps  that  Locke's  self-contradiction 
nltureOT**^  in  this  regaid  is  more  apparent  than  real ;  that  the  two  pro- 
God,  the  cesses  of  combining  simple  ideas  are  essentially  different, 
SroncTto'  J^®*  because  in  the  later  process  they  are  combined  by  a  con- 
■Bbstaaoe.  scious  act  of  the  mind  as  accidents  of  a  '  something,'  of 
which  the  general  idea  has  been  preTiously  formed,  whereas 
in  the  earlier  one  they  are  merely  presented  together  *  by 
nature,'  and,  ex  hypothesis  though  they  gradually  suggest,  do 
not  carry  with  them  any  reference  to  a  *  substratum.'  But 
upon  this  we  must  remark  that  the  presentation  of  ideas  *  by 
nature '  or  ^  by  God,'  though  a  mode  of  speech  of  which 
Locke  in  his  account  of  the  origin  of  knowledge  freely  avails 
himself,  means  nothing  else  than  their  relation  to  a  '  sub- 
stratum,' if  not  *  wherein  they  do  subsist,'  yet  *  from  which 
they  do  result.'  If  then  it  is  for  consciousness  that  ideas 
are  presented  together  by  nature,  they  already  carry  with 
them  that  reference  to  a  substratum  which  is  supposed  gra*' 
dually  to  result  from  their  concurrence.  If  it  is  not  for  con- 
sciousness that  they  are  so  presented,  if  they  do  not  severally 
carry  with  them  a  reference  to  *  something,'  how  is  it  they 
come  to  do  so  in  the  gross  ?  If  a  single  sensation  of  heat  is 
not  referred  to  a  hot  thing,  why  should  it  be  so  referred  on 
the  thousandth  recurrence?  Because  perhaps,  recurring 
constantly  in  the  same  relations,  it  compels  the  inference  of 
permanent  antecedents?    But  the  ^same  relations'  mean 


IS  THE  IDEA  OF  SUBSTANCE  GOT  BY  ABSTRACTION  ?    81 

relations  to  the  same  things,  and  the  observation  of  these 
relations  presupposes  just  that  conception  of  the  thing  which 
it  is  sought  to  account  for. 

88.  We  are  estopped,  however,  from  any  such  explanation  But  it  is 
of  Locke  as  would  suggest  these  ulterior  questions  by  his  •^P^ifitly 
explicit  statement  that  ^  all  simple  ideas,  all  sensible  quali-  stance  that' 
ties,  carry  with  them  a  supposition  of  a  substratum  to  exist  ^^^ 
in,  and  of  a  substance  wherein  they  inhere.'   The  vindication  them  refer 
of  himself  against  the  pathetic  complaint  of  Stillingfleet,  ^»™- 
that  he  had  *  almost  discarded  substance  out  of  the  reason-  ^  ^^ 
able  part  of  the  world,'  in  which  tliis  statement  occurs,  was 
certainly  not  needed.  Already  in  the  original  text  the  simple 
ideas,  of  which  the  association  suggests  the  idea  of  sub- 
stance, are  such  as  ^  the  mind  finds  in  exterior  things  or  by 
reflection  on  its  own  operations.'     But  to  find  them  in  an 
exterior  thing  is  to  find  them  in  a  substance,  a  '  something 
it  knows  not  what,'  regarded  as  outward,  just  as  to  find  them 
by  reflection  on  its  own  operations,  as  its  own,  is  to  find  them 
in  such  a  substance  regarded  as  inward.     The  process  then 
by  which,  according  to  Locke,  the  general  idea  of  substance 
is  arrived  at,  presupposes  this  idea  just  as  much  as  the  pro- 
cess, by  which  ideas  of  particular  sorts  of  substances  are  got, 
presupposes  it,  and  the  distinction  between  the  two  processes, 
as  he  puts  it,  disappears. 

39.  The  same  paralogism  appears  under  a  slightly  altered  In  thepio- 

form  when  it  is  stated  (in  the  first  letter  to  Stillingfleet)  that  ^  J^^ 

the  idea  of  substance  as  the  '  general  indetermined  idea  of  are  snp- 

iomeihing  is  by  the  abstraction  of  the  mind  derived  from  the  P°*^  ^ 

ftmTO  ftt 

simple  ideas  of  sensation  and  reflection.'    Now  ^  abstraction '  complex 
with  Locke  means  the  *  separation  of  an  idea  from  all  other  ^^^  of 
ideas  that  accompany  it  in  its  real  existence.'     (Book  ii.  the  begin- 
chap.  xii.  sec.  1.)     It  is  clear  then  that  it  is  impossible  to  ningisthe 
abstract  an  idea  which  is  not  there,  in  real  existence,  to  be  thrLX 
abstracted.    Accordingly,  if  the  ^  general  idea  of  something ' 
is  derived  by  abstraction  frt)m  simple  ideas  of  sensation  and 
reflection,  it  must  be  originally  given  with  these  ideas,  or  it 
would  not  afterwards  be  separated  from  them.     Conversely 
they  must  carry  this  idea  with  them,  and  cannot  be  simple 
ideas  at  all,  but  compound  ones,  each  made  up  of  *  the 
general  idea  of  something  or  being/  and  of  an  accident 
which  this  something  supports.     How  then  dues  the  general 
idea  of  substance  or  f  something,'  as  derived^  differ  from  the 


82  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

idea  of  *  something/  as  given  in  the  original  ideas  of  sensa- 
tion and  reflection  from  which  the  supposed  process  of  ab- 
straction starts  9  What  can  be  said  of  the  one  that  cannot 
be  said  of  the  other?  K  the  derived  general  idea  is  of 
something  related  to  qualities,  what,  according  to  Locke,  are 
the  original  ideas  but  those  of  qualities  related  to  something  P 
It  is  true  that  the  general  idea  is  of  something,  of  which 
nothing  farther  is  known,  related  to  qualities  in  general,  not 
to  any  particular  qualities.  But  the  *  simple  idea  *  in  like 
manner  can  only  be  of  an  indeterminate  quality,  for  in  order 
to  any  determination  of  it,  the  idea  must  be  put  together 
with  another  idea,  and  so  cease  to  be  simple ;  and  the  *  some- 
thing,' to  which  it  is  referred,  must  for  the  same  reason  be  a 
purely  indeterminate  something.  If,  in  order  to  avoid  con- 
cluding that  Locke  thus  unwittingly  identified  the  abstract 
general  idea  of  substance  with  any  simple  idea,  we  say  that 
the  simple  idea,  because  not  abstract,  is  not  indeterminate 
but  of  a  real  quality,  defined  by  manifold  relations,  we 
fall  upon  the  new  difficulty  that,  if  so,  not  only  does  the 
simple  idea  become  manifoldly  complex,  but  just  such 
an  ^  idea  of  a  particular  sort  of  substance '  as,  according 
to  Locke,  is  derived  from  the  derived  idea  of  substance  in 
general.  As  an  idea  of  a  quality,  it  is  also  necessarily  an 
idea  of  a  correlative  '  something ;'  and  if  it  is  an  idea  of  a 
quality  in  its  reality,  i.  e.  as  determined  by  various  relations, 
it  must  be  an  idea  of  a  variously  qualified  something,  i.  e.  of 
a  particular  substance.  Then  not  merely  the  middle  of  the 
twofold  process  by  which  we  are  supposed  to  get  at  *  complex 
ideas  of  substances ' —  i.  e.  the  abstract  something ;  but  its 
end — i.  e.  the  particidar  something — ^tums  out  to  be  the 
same  as  its  beginning. 
Doctrine  of  40.  The  fact  is,  that  in  making  the  general  idea  of  sub- 
fnTO^*^^'°"  stance  precede  particular  ideas  of  sorts  of  substances  (as  he 
fiietent  Certainly  however  confusedly  does,  in  the  28rd  chapter  of 
tri^  0?  ^'^®  Second  Book,'  as  well  as  by  implication  in  his  doctrine 
compies  of  modes,  Book  ii.  chap.  xii.  sec.  4),  Locke  stumbled  upon  a 
idMs.  truth  which  he  was  not  aware  of,  and  which  mil  not  fit  into 

his  ordinary  doctrine  of  general  ideas  :  the  truth  that  know- 
ledge is  a  process  from  the  more  abstract  to  the  more  con- 
crete, not  the  reverse,  as  is  commonly  supposed,  and  as 

*  See  abore,  paragraph  36. 


LOCKE'S  ACCOUNT  OF  ABSTRACT  GENERAL  IDEAS.     88 

Locke's  definitioD  of  abstraction  implies.  Throughout  his 
prolix  discussion  of  *  substance  *  and  *  essence  *  we  find  two 
opposite  notions  perpetually  cross  each  other:  one  that 
biowledge  begins  with  the  simple  idea,  the  other  that  it  be^ 
gins  with  the  real  thing  as  particularized  by  manifold  rela- 
tions. According  to  the  former  notion,  simple  ideas  being 
given,  void  of  relation,  as  the  real,  the  mind  of  its  own  act 
proceeds  to  bring  them  into  relation  and  compound  them : 
according  to  the  latter,  a  thing  of  various  properties  (i.  e. 
relations')  being  given  as  the  real,  the  mind  proceeds  to 
separate  these  from  each  other.  According  to  the  one  notion 
the  intellectual  process,  as  one  of  complication,  ends  just 
where,  according  to  the  other  notion,  as  one  of  abstraction, 
it  began. 

41.  The  chief  verbal  equivocation,  under  which   Locke  The  con 
disguises  the  confusion  of  these  two  notions,  is  to  be  found  ^°^^^  , 
m  the  use  of  the  word  *  particular,'  which  is  sometimes  used  ^e  of     * 
for  the  mere  individual  having  no  community  with  anything  'paitioa 
else,  sometimes  for  the  thing  qualified  by  relation  to  a 
multitude  of  other  things.     The  simple  idea  or  sensation ; 

the  *  something '  which  the  simple  idea  is  supposed  to  *  re- 
port,' and  which  Locke  at  his  pleasure  identifies  with  it ;  the 
complex  idea  j  and  the  thing  as  the  collection  of  the  proper- 
ties which  the  simple  idea  ^  reports,'  all  are  merged  by  Locke 
under  the  one  term  ^  particulars.'  As  the  only  consistency 
in  his  use  of  the  term  seems  to  lie  in  its  opposition  to 

*  generals,'  we  naturally  turn  to  the  passage  where  this 
opposition  is  spoken  of  most  at  large. 

42.  ^  General  and  universal  belong  not  to  the  real  existence  Lodke's 
of  things,  but  are  the  inventions  and  creatures  of  the  under-  *f]^J^^ 
standing,  made  by  it  for  its  own  use,  and  concern  only  signs,  general 
irhether  words  or  ideas.     Words  are  general  when  used  for  id®"* 
signs  of  general  ideas,  and  so  are  applicable  indifferently  to 

many  particular  things ;  and  ideas  are  general,  when  they 
are  set  up  as  the  representatives  of  many  particular  things ; 
but  universality  belongs  not  to  things  themselves,  which  are 
all  of  them  particular  in  their  existence,  even  those  words 
and  ideas  which  in  their  signification  are  general.     When 

*  Cf.  Book  ii.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  37.  of  the  ideas  which  make  up  our  complex 

*  Most  of  the  simple  ideas  that  make  up  •*  idea  of  gold  ...  are  nothing  else  but 
our  eomplex  ideas  of  substances  are  so  many  relations  to  other  substanoes.' 
lalj  powers  .  .  .  e.  g.  the  greater  part 

VOL.   I.  D 


M  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

therefore  we  quit  particulars,  the  generals  that  rest  are 
only  creatures  of  our  own  making,  their  general  nature 
being  nothing  but  the  capacity  they  are  put  into  by  the 
understanding,  of  signifying  or  representing  many  particu- 
lars. For  the  signification  they  have  is  nothing  but  a 
relation  that  by  the  mind  of  man  is  added  to  them.  •  •  . 
The  sorting  of  things  under  names  is  the  workmanship  of 
the  understanding,  taking  occasion  from  the  similitude  it 
observes  among  them  to  make  abstract  general  ideas,  and  set 
them  up  in  the  mind,  with  names  annexed  to  them,  as  patterns 
or  forms  (for  in  that  sense  the  word  form  has  a  very  proper 
signification),  to  which  as  particular  things  are  found  to 
agree>  so  they  come  to  be  of  that  species,  have  that  denomina- 
tion, or  are  put  into  that  classis.  For  when  we  say  this  is  a 
man,  that  a  horse ;  this  justice,  that  cruelty,  what  do  we 
else  but  rank  things  under  different  specific  names,  as 
agreeing  to  those  abstract  ideas,  of  which  we  have  made 
those  names  the  signs  9  And  what  are  the  essences  of  those 
species,  set  out  and  marked  by  names,  but  those  abstract 
ideas  in  the  mind ;  which  are,  as  it  were,  the  bonds  between 
particular  things  that  exist,  and  the  names  they  are  to  be 
ranked  under  P '  (Book  in.  chap.  iii.  sees.  11  and  13.) 
'Things  43.  In  the  first  of  these  remarkable  passages  we  begin 

not  gene-  ^^  the  familiar  opposition  between  ideas  as  *  the  creatures 
of  the  mind '  and  real  thin^.  Ideas,  and  the  words  which 
express  them,  may  be  general,  but  things  cannot.  *  They 
are  all  of  them  particular  in  their  existence.'  Then  the 
ideas  and  words  themselves  appear  as  things,  and  as  such 
'  in  their  existence '  can  only  be  particular.  It  is  only  in  its 
signification,  i.e.  in  its  relation  to  other  ideas  which  it 
represents,  that  an  idea,  particular  itself,  becomes  general, 
and  this  relation  does  not  belong  to  the  *  existence  '  of  the 
idea  or  to  the  idea  in  itself,  but  ^  by  the  mind  of  man  is  added 
to  it.'  The  relation  being  thus  a  fictitious  addition  to 
reality,  'general  and  universal  are  mere  invei^tions  and 
creatures  of  the  understanding.'  The  next  passage,  in 
spite  of  the  warning  that  all  ideas  are  particular  in  their 
existence,  still  speaks  of  general  ideas,  but  only  as '  set  up  in 
the  mind.'  To  these  '  particular  things  existing  are  found 
to  agree,'  and  the  agreement  is  expressed  in  such  judgments 
as  '  this  is  a  man,  that  a  horse ;  this  is  justice,  that  cruelty ; ' 
the   *  this  '   and   *  that '   representing   '  particular    existing 


ONLY   'PARTICULARS'  REAL.  35 

things/  ^  horse '  and  '  cruelty '  abstract  general  ideas  to 
which  these  are  fonnd  to  agree. 

44.  One  antithesis  is  certainly  maintained  throughout  Generality 
these  passages — ^that  between  'real  existence  which  is  ^^no^^e 
always  particular,  and  the  workmanship  of  the  mind,'  which  mind. 

' invents' generality.  Real  existence,  however,  is  ascribed 
(a)  to  things  themselves,  {b)  to  words  and  ideas,  even 
those  which  become  of  general  signification,  (e)  to  mixed 
modes,  for  in  the  proposition  *this  is  justice,'  the  *this' 
most  represent  a  mixed  mode.  (Cf.  ii.  xii.  5.)  The  charac* 
teristic  of  the  *  really  existent,'  which  distinguishes  it  from 
the  workmanship  of  the  mind,  would  seem  to  be  mere  in- 
dividuality, exclusive  of  all  relation.  The  simple  '  this '  and 
<  that^'  apart  from  the  relation  expressed  in  the  judgment, 
being  mere  individuals,  are  really  existent;  and  conversely, 
ideas,  which  in  themselves  have  real  existence,  when  a  rela- 
tion, in  virtue  of  which  they  become  significant,  has  been 
'added  to  them  by  the  mind,'  become  'inventions  of  the 
understanding.'  This  consists  with  the  express  statement  in 
the  chapter  on  *  relation '  (ii.  xxv.  8),  that  it  is  *  not  con- 
tained in  the  existence  of  things,  but  is  something  extraneous 
and  superinduced.'  Thus  generality,  as  a  relation  between 
any  one  of  a  multitude  o{  single  (not  necessarily  simple)  ideas, 
e.g.  single  ideas  of  horses,  and  all  the  rest — a  relation  which 
belongs  not  to  any  one  of  them  singly — is  superinduced  by 
the  understanding  upon  their  real,  i.e.  their  single  existence. 
Apart  frx>m  this  relation,  it  would  seem,  or  in  their  mere 
singleness,  even  ideas  of  mixed  modes,  e.g.  this  net  of  justice, 
may  have  real  existence* 

45.  The  result  of  Locke's  statement,  thus  examined.  The  remit 
clearly  is  that  real  existence  belongs  to  the  present  momen-  ifl»  ^^^ 
tary  act  of  consciousness,  and  to  that  alone.  Ascribed  as  it  of^eadi  "^ 
is  to  the  '  thing  itself,'  to  the  idea  which,  us  generaly  has  it  not,  momert » 
and  to  the  mixed  mode,  it  is  in  each  case  the  momentary  *^®"®'**^ 
presence  to  consciousness  that  constitutes  it.     To  a  thing 

itself,  as  distinct  from  the  presentation  to  consciousness,  it 
cannot  belong,  for  such  a  '  thing '  means  that  which  remains 
identical  with  itself  under  manifold  appearances,  and  both 
identity  and  appearance  imply  relation,  i.e.  '  an  invention  of 
the  mind.'  A^s  little  can  it  belong  to  the  content  of  any  idea, 
since  this  is  in  all  cases  constituted  by  relation  to  other 
ideas.    Thus  if  I  judge  *  this  is  sweet,'  the  real  exisi^nce  lies 

T>2 


86  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

in  the  simple  ^  this/  in  the  mere  form  of  presentation  at  an 
individual  now,  not  in  the  relation  of  this  to  other  flavoars 
which  constitutes  the  determinate  sweetness,  or  to  a  sweet- 
ness at  other  times  tasted.  If  I  judge  '  this  is  a  horse,'  a 
present  vision  really  exists,  but  not  so  its  relation  to  other 
sensations  of  sight  or  touch,  closely  precedent  or  sequent, 
which  make  up  the  '  total  impression ;'  much  less  its  relation 
to  other  like  impressions  thought  of,  in  consideration  of 
which  a  common  name  is  applied  to  it.     If,  again,  I  judge 

*  this  is  an  act  of  justice,'  the  present  thought  of  the  act, 
as  present,  really  exists ;  not  so  those  relations  of  the  act 
which  either  make  it  just,  or  make  me  apply  the  name  to  it. 
It  is  true  that  according  to  this  doctrine  the  '  really  existent ' 
is  the  unmeaning,  and  that  any  statement  about  it  is  im- 
possible. We  cannot  judge  of  it  without  bringing  it  into 
relation,  in  which  it  ceases  to  be  what  in  its  mere  singleness 
it  is,  and  thus  loses  its  reality,  overlaid  by  the  *  invention  of 
the  understanding.'    Nay,  if  we  say  that  it   is  the  mere 

*  this  '  or  *  that,'  as  such — the  simple  *  here  '  and  *  now ' — 
the  very  *  this,'  in  being  mentioned  or  judged  of,  becomes 
related  to  other  things  which  we  have  called  *  this,'  and  ihe 

*  now '  to  other  *  nows.'  Thus  each  acquires  a  generality, 
and  with  it  becomes  fictitious.  As  Plato  long  ago  taught— 
though  the  lesson  seems  to  require  to  be  taught  anew  to 
each  generation  of  philosophers — a  consistent  sensationalism 
must  be  speechless.  Locke,  himself,  in  one  of  the  passages 
quoted,  implicity  admits  this  by  indicating  that  only  through 
relations  or  in  tiieir  generality  are  ideas  *  significant.* 

How  46.  He  was  not  the  man,  however,  to  becom.e  speechless 

^^f  out  of  sheer  consistency.  He  has  a  redundancy  of  terms 
result.  a^d  tropes  for  disguising  from  himself  and  his  reader  the 
real  import  of  his  doctrine.  In  the  latter  part  of  the 
passage  quoted  we  find  that  the  relation  or  community 
between  ideas,  which  the  understanding  invents,  is  occa- 
sioned by  a  *  similitude  which  it  observes  among  things.* 
The  general  idea  having  been  thus  invented,  'things  are 
found  to  agree  with  it ' — as  is  natural  since  they  suggested  it. 
Hereupon  we  are  forced  to  ask  how,  if  all  relation  is  super- 
induced upon  real  existence  by  the  understanding,  an  observed 
relation  of  similitude  among  things  can  occasion  the  superin- 
duction ;  and  again  how  it  happens,  if  all  generality  of  ideas 
is  a  fiction  of  the  mind,  that  *  things  are  found  to  agree  with 


AMBIGUrrY  OF  THE  TERM  'PARTICULAB.'  «7 

general  ideas.'  How  can  the  real  existence  called  Hhis '  or 
^  that,'  which  only  really  exists  so  far  as  nothing  can  he 
said  of  it  but  that  it  is  *  this  '  or  *  that/  agree  with  anything 
whatever?  Agreement  implies  some  content,  some  deter- 
mination by  properties,  i.e.  by  relations,  iij  the  things 
agreeing,  whereas  the  really  existent  excludes  relation.  How 
then  can  it  agree  with  the  abstract  general  idea,  the  import 
of  which,  according  to  Locke's  own  showing,  depends  solely 
on  relation? 

47.  Such  questions  did  not  occur  to  Locke,  because  w)iile  The  *  pur- 
ajaserting  the  mere  individuality  of  things  existent,  q,nd  the  ^*^^*'.'. 
simplicity  of  all  ideas  as  given,  i.e.  as  real,  he  never  ^lly  the  indi- 
recognised  the  meaning  of  his  own  assertioi^.     Under  the  ^^^  , 
shelter  of  the  ambiguous  *  particular '  he  could  at  any  time  by  gendered 
substitute  for  the  mere  individual  the  determinate  individual,  wlationa. 
or  individual  qualified  by  community  with  other  things  ;  just 
as,  again,  under  covering  of  the  '  simple  idea '  he  could  sub 
stitute  for  the  mere  momentary  consciousness  the  perception 
of  a  definite  thing.     Thus  when  he  speaks  of  the  judgment 
*  this  is  gold '  as  expressing  the  agreement  of  a  real  (i.e.  in- 
dividual) thing  with  a  general  idea,  he  thinks  of '  this '  as 
already  having,  apart  from  the  judgment,  the  determination 
which  it  first  receives  in  the  judgment.     He  thinks  of  it, 
in  other  words,  not  as  the  mere  '  perishing '  sensation '  or 
individual  void  of  relation,  but  as  a  sensation  symbolical  of 
other  possibilities  of  sensation  which,  as  so  many  relations  of 
a  thing  to  us   or  to  other  things,    are  connoted   by   th^ 
common  noun  '  gold.'     It  thus  ^  agrees '  with  the  abstract 
idea  or  conception  of  qualities,  i.e.  because  it  is  already  the 
^creature  of  the  understanding,'  determined  by  relation^ 
which  constitute  a  generality  and  community  between  it  and 
other  things.     Such  a  notion  of  the  really  existent  thing-^ 
wholly  inconsibtent  with  his  doctrine  of  relation  and  of  the 
general — ^Loeke  has  before  him  when  he  speaks  of  general 
ideas  as  formed  by  abstraction  of  certain  qualities  from  real 
things,  or  of  certain  ideas  from  other  ideas  that  accompany 
them  in  real  existence.     *When   some   one  first  lit  on  a 
parcel  of  that  sort  of  substance  we  denote  by  the  word  goldy 
...  its  peculiar  colour,  perhaps,  and  weight  were  the  first 
he  abstracted  from  it,  to  make  the  complex  idea  of  that  species 
.  .  .  another  perhaps  added  to  these  the  ideas  of  fusibility 
*  '  AU  impressions  are  perishing  existences.' — Huhb.    See  below,  paragraph  209. 


88  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

and  fixedness  .  .  .  another  its  dactility  and  solubility  in 
aqua  regia.  These,  or  part  of  these,  put  together,  usually 
make  the  complex  idea  in  men's  minds  of  that  sort  of  body 
we  call  gold.^  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  9.)  Here  the  supposi- 
tion is  that  a  thing,  multitudinously  qualified,  is  given  apart 
from  any  a43tion  of  the  understanding,  which  then  proceeds 
to  act  in  the  way  of  successively  detaching  ('  abstracting ') 
these  qualities  and  recombining  them  as  the  idea  of  a  species. 
Such  a  recombination,  indeed,  would  seem  but  wasted 
labour.  The  qualities  are  assumed  to  be  ah^ady  found  by 
the  understanding  and  found  as  in  a  thing  ;  otherwise  the 
understanding  could  not  abstract  them  from  it.  Whj 
should  it  then  painfully  put  together  in  imperfect  combina- 
tion what  has  been  previously  given  to  it  complete  ?  Of  the 
complex  idea  which  results  from  the  work  of  abstraction, 
nothing  can  be  said  but  a  small  part  of  what  is  predicable 
of  the  known  thing  which  the  possibility  of  such  abstrac- 
tion presupposes, 
rhisis  48*  ^The  complex  idea  of  a  species,'  spoken  of  in  the 

jj?  ^^  passage  last  quoted,  corresponds  to  what,  in  Locke's  theory 
whidi  ab^  of  subfitancc,  is  called  the  *  idea  of  a  particular  sort  of  sub- 
Btraction  stance.'  Jn  considering  that  theory  we  saw  that,  according 
|K)B©Tto  to  his  account,  the  beginning  of  the  process  by  which  the 
start.  ^abstract  idea  of  substance'  was  forn^ed,  was  either  that 

abstract  idea  itself,  the  mere  '  something,'  or  by  a  double 
contradiction  the  *  complex  idea  of  a  particular  sort  of  sub- 
stance '  which  yet  we  only  come  to  have  after  the  abstract 
idea  has  been  formed,  la  the  passage  now  before  us  there 
is  no  direct  mention  of  the  abstraction  of  the  ^  substratum,' 
^8  such,  but  only  of  the  quality,  and  hence  there  is  no 
ambiguity  about  the  paralogism.  It  is  not  a  mere  *  some- 
thing '  that  the  man  ^  lights  upon,'  and  thus  it  is  not  this 
that  holds  the  place  at  once  of  the  given  and  the  derived, 
but  a  something  having  manifold  qualities  to  be  abstracted* 
In  other  words,  it  is  the  *  idea  of  a  particular  sort  of  sub- 
stance '  that  he  starts  from,  and  it  is  just  this  again  to  which 
as  a  ^  complex  idea  of  a  species,'  his  understanding  is  sup- 
posed gradually  to  lead  him.  The  understanding,  indeed, 
according  to  Locke,  is  never  adequate  to  nature,  and 
accordingly  the  qualities  abstracted  and  recombined  in  the 
complex  idea  always  fall  vastly  short  of  the  fulness  of  those 


MERE  INDIVIDUAL  AND  QUALIFIED  INDIVIDUAL.      9» 

giyen  in  the  real  thing ;  or  as  he  states  it  in  terms  of  the 
multiplication  table  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxzi.  sec.  10),  '  some  who 
have  examined  this  species  more  accqratelj  could,  I  believe, 
enumerate  ten  times  as  many  properties  in  gold,  all  of  them 
as  inseparable  from  its  internal  constitution,  as  its  colour  or 
weight;  and  it  is  probable  if  any  one  knew  all  the  properties 
that  are  by  divers  men  knovm  of  this  metal,  there  would  an 
hundred  times  as  many  ideas  go  to  the  comple](  idea  of  gold, 
as  any  one  man  has  yet  in  his  ;  and  yet  perhaps  that  would 
not  be  the  thousandth  part  of  what  is  to  be  discovered  in  it.' 
These  two  million  properties,  and  upwards,  which  await  ab* 
straction  in  gold,  are  all,  it  must  be  noted,  according  to 
Locke's  statement  elsewhere  (Book  ii.  chap  zxiii.  sec.  87), 
<  nothing  but  so  many  relations  to  other  substances.'  It  is 
just  on  account  of  these  multitudinous  relations  of  the  real 
thing  that  the  understanding  is  inadequate  to  its  compre- 
hension. Yet  according  to  Locke's  doctrine  of  relation 
these  must  all  be  themselves  '  superinductions  of  the  mind,' 
and  the  greater  the  fulness  which  they  constitute,  the  farther 
is  the  distance  from  the  mere  individuality  which  elsewhere^ 
in  contrast  with  the  fictitiousness  of '  generals,'  appears  as 
the  equivalent  of  real  existence. 

49.  The  real  thing  and  the  creation  of  the  understanding  yet,  ac- 
fhus  change  places.     That  which  is  given  to  the  understand-  cording  to 
ing  as  the  real,  which  it  finds  and  does  not  make,  is  not  now  ^^^^  ^f 
the  bare  atom  upon  which  relations  have  to  be  artificially  relation, 
superinduced.     Nor  is  it  the  mere  present  feeling,  which  has  ti^^f 
*  by  the  mind  of  man '  to  be  made  '  significant,'  or  represen-  thought. 
tative  of  past  experience.      It  is  itself  an  inexhaustible  com- 
plex of  relations,  whether  they  are  considered  as  subsisting 
between  it  and  other  things,  or  between  the  sensations  which 
it  is  *  fitted  to  produce  in  us.'     These  are  the  real,  which  is 
thus  a  system,  a  community ;  and  if  the  *  general,'  as  Locke 
says,  is  that  which  *  has  the  capacity  of  representing  many 
particulars,'  the  real  thing  itself  is  general,  for  it  represents 
— nay,  is  constituted  by — ^the   manifold  particular  feelings 
which,  mediately  or  immediately,  it  excites  in  us.     On  the 
other  hand,  the  invention  of  the  understanding,  instead  of 
giving  *  significance '  or  content  to  the  mere  individuality  of 
the  real,  as  it  does  according  to  Locke's  theory  of  *  generals,' 
now  appears  as  detaching  fragments  from  the  frilness  of  the 


40 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Nummary 
of  the 
above 
CODtradio- 

tiOQB. 


real  to  recombine  them  in  an  ^  abstract  essence '  el  its  own.. 
Instead  of  adding  complexity  to  the  simple,  it  subtracts  from 
the  complex. 

50.  To  gather  np,  then,  the  lines  of  contradiction  which 
traverse  Locke's  doctrine  of  real  existence  as  it  appears 
in  his  account  of  general  and  complex  ideas : — The  idea 
of  substance  is  an  abstract  general  idea,  not  given  di- 
rectly in  sensation  or  reflection,  but  *  invented  by  the  un- 
derstanding,' as  by  consequence  must  be  ideas  of  particular 
sorts  of  substances  which  presuppose  the  abstract  idea.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  ideas  of  sensation  and  reflection,  from 
which  the  idea  of  substance  is  abstracted,  and  to  which  as 
real  it  as  an  inveftdixm  is  opposed,  are  ideas  of  ^  something,' 
and  are  only  real  as  representative  of  something.  But  this 
idea  of  something  ss  the  idea  of  substance.  Therefore  the 
idea  of  substance  is  the  presupposition,  and  the  condition 
of  the  reality,  of  the  very  ideas  from  which  it  is  said  to  be 
derived.  Again,  if  the  general  idea  of  substance  is  got  by 
abstraction,  it  must  be  originally  given  in  conjunction  with 
the  ideas  of  seusation  or  reflection  from  which  it  is  afterwards 
abstracted,  i.e.  sepa^ted.  But  in  such  conjunction  it  con- 
stitutes the  ideas  of  particular  dorts  of  substances.  There- 
fore these  latter  ideas,  which  jet  we  ^  come  to  have  '  after 
the  general  idea  of  substance,  form  the  prior  experience  from 
which  this  general  idea  is  abstracted.  Further,  this  original 
experience,  from  which  abstraction  starts,  being  of  *  sorts  of 
substances,'  and  these  sorts  being  constituted  by  relations,  it 
follows  that  relation  is  given  in  the  original  experience. 
But  that  which  is  so  given  is  ^  real  existence '  in  opposition 
to  the  invention  of  the  understanding.  Therefore  these 
relations,  and  the  community  which  they  constitute,  reallj 
exist.  On  the  other  hand,  mere  individuals  alone  reallj 
exist,  while  relations  between  them  are  superinduced  by  the 
mind.  Once  more,  the  simple  idea  given  in  sensation  or 
reflection,  as  it  is  made /or  not  hif  us,  has  or  results  from  real 
existence,  whereas  general  and  complex  ideas  are  the  work- 
manship of  the  mind.  But  this  workmanship  consists  in  the 
abstraction  of  ideas  from  each  other,  and  from  that  to  which 
thej  are  related  as  qualities.  It  thus  presupposes  at  once 
the  general  idea  of  '  something '  or  substance,  and  the  com- 
plex idea  of  qualities  of  the  something.  Therefore  it  must 
be  general  and  complex  ideas  that  are  real«  as  made  for  and 

i 


ABSTRACT  AND  CX)lfftSS^^^KftSr  41 


not  by  us,  and  that  afford  the  inventive  understanding  its 
material.  Yet  if  so— if  they  are  given — why  make  them 
over  again  by  abstraction  and  recomplication  ? 

51.  We  may  get  over  the  last  difficulty,  indeed,  by  dis-  They  can- 
tinfiruishin&r  between  the  complex  and  confused,  between  ^^^ 
abstraction  and  analysis.   We  may  say  that  what  is  onginally  without 
given  in  experience  is  the  confused,  which  to  us  is  simple,  or  JJ^j^^^g 
in  other  words  has  no  definite  content,  because,  till  it  has  fonda- 
been  analysed,  nothing  can  be  said  of  it,  though  in  itself  it  mental 
is  infin^^ly  complex;  that  thus  the  process,  which  Locke  ^^^  ^* 


(yTM^Sfj  ciJls  abstraction,  and  which,  as  he  describes  it, 
consists  merely  in  taking  grains  from  the  big  heap  that  is 
given  in  order  to  make  a  little  heap  of  one's  own,  is  yet, 
rightly  understood,  the  true  process  of  knowledge — a  process 
which  may  be  said  at  once  to  begin  with  the  complex  and  to 
end  with  it,  to  take  from  the  concrete  and  to  constitute  it, 
because  it  begins  with  that  which  is  in  itself  the  fulness  of 
reality,  but  which  only  becomes  so  for  us  as  it  is  gradually 
spelt  out  by  our  analysis.  To  put  the  case  thus,  however, 
is  not  to  correct  Locke's  statement,  but  wholly  to  change  his 
doctrine.  It  renders  futile  his  easy  method  of  '  sending  a 
man  to  his  senses '  for  the  discovery  of  reality,  and  destroys 
the  supposition  that  the  elements  of  knowledge  can  be 
ascertained  by  the  interrogation  of  the  individual  conscious- 
"ness.  Such  consciousness  can  tell  nothing  of  its  own 
beginning,  if  of  this  beginning,  as  of  the  purely  indefinite, 
nothing  can  be  said ;  if  it  only  becomes  defined  through 
relations,  which  in  its  state  of  primitive  potentiality  are  not 
.actually  in  it.  The  senses  again,  so  far  from  being,  in  that 
mere  passivity  which  Locke  ascribes  to  them,  organs  of 
ready-made  reality,  can  have  nothing  to  tell,  if  it  is  only 
through  the  active  processes  of  *  discerning,  comparing,  and 
compounding,'  that  they  acquire  a  definite  content.  But  to 
admit  this  is  nothing  else  than,  in  order  to  avoid  a  contra- 
diction of  which  Locke  was  not  aware,  to  efface  just  that 
characteristic  of  his  doctrine  which  commends  it  to  '  common 
sense ' — the  supposition,  namely,  that  the  simple  datum  of 
sense,  as  it  is  for  sense  or  in  its  mere  individuality,  is  the 
real,  in  opposition  to  the  'invention  of  the  mind.'  That 
this  supposition  is  to  make  the  real  the  unmeaning,  the 
empty,  of  which  nothing  can  be  said,  he  did  not  see  because, 
under  an  unconscious  delusion  of  words,  even  while  asserting 


48  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

thai  the  names  of  simple  ideas  are  nndefinable  (Book  ht. 
chap.  iv.  sec.  4),  which  means  that  nothing  can  be  said  of 
such  ideas,  and  while  admitting  that  the  processes  of  dis- 
cerning, comparing,  and  compounding  ideas,  which  mean 
nothing  else  than  the  bringing  them  into  relation*  or  the 
superinduction  upon  them  of  fictions  of   the    mind,  are 
necessary  to  constitute  even  the  beginnings  of  knowledge,  be 
yet  allows  himself  to  invest  the  simple  idea,  as  the  real,  with 
those  definite  qualities  which  can  only  accrue  to  it,  according 
to  his  showing,  from  the  *  inventive '  action  of  the  under- 
standing. 
As  real           62.  Thus  invested,  it  is  already  substance  or  symbolical  of 
Se^Bimmie   ^ubstanco,  not  a  mere  feeling  but  a  felt  thing,  recognised 
idea  car-     either  Under  that  minimum  of  qualification  which  enables  us 
^iarmtbd*  merely  to  say  that  it  is  *  something,*  or  (in  Locke's  language) 
relation  of  abstract  substance,  or  under  the   greater  complication  of 
^'**®'         qualities  which  constitutes  a  *  particular  sort  of  substance' — 
gold,  horse,  water,  &c.     Beal  existence  thus  means  substance. 
It  is  not  the  simple  idea  or  sensation  by  itself  that  is  real, 
but  this  idea  as  caused  by  a  thing.     It  is  the  thing  that  is 
primarily  the  real ;   the  idea  only  secondarily  so,  because  it 
results  from  a  power  in  the  thing.    As  we  have  seen,  Locke's 
doctrine  of  the  necessary  adequacy,  reality,  and  truth  of  the 
simple  idea  turns  upon  the  supposition  that  it  is,  and  an- 
nounces itself  as,  an  *  ectype '  of  an  *  archetype.'     But  there 
is  not  a  different  archetype  to  each  sensation ;  if  there  were, 
in  *  reporting '  it  the  sensation  would  do  no  more  than  report 
itself.     It  is  the  supposed  single  cause  of  manifold  different 
sensations  or  simple  ideas,  to  which  a  single  name  is  applied. 
*  K  sugar  produce  in  us  the  ideas  which  we  call  whiteness 
and  sweetness,  we  are  sure  there  is  a  power  in   sugar  to 
produce  those  ideas  in  our  minds And  so  each  sensa- 
tion answering  the  power  that  operates  on  any  of  our  senses, 
the  idea  so  produced  is  a  real  idea  (and  not  a  fiction  of  the 
mind,  which  has  no  power  to  produce  any  single  idea),  and 

1  Locke  only  states  this  explicitly  of  which  means  that  they  are  brought  into 

comparison,  *an  operation  of  the  mind  relation  as  constituents  of  a  whole, 

about  its  ideas,  upon  which  depends  all  That  these  three  processes  are  neces- 

that  larffe  tribe  of  ideas,  comprehended  saiy  to  constitute  the  beginnings    of 

under  relation/    (Book  n.  chap.  xi.  sec.  knowledge,  according  to  Locke,  appears 

4.)   It  is  clear,  howeyer,  that  the  same  from  Book  u.  chap.  zi.  sec.  15,  t^tken  in 

remark  must  appl^  to  the  *  discernment  connection  with  what  precedes  in  that 

of  ideas,'  which  is  strictly  correlative  chapter. 
to  ocmparison,  and  to  their  composition, 


SUBSTANCE  AND  CAUSE.  4« 

cannot  bot  be  adequate  •  •  .  •  and  so  all  simple  ideas  are 
adequate/  (Book  u.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  2.)  The  sugar,  which 
is  here  the  '  archetype '  and  the  source  of  reality  in  the  idea, 
is  just  what  Locke  elsewhere  calls  ^a  particular  sort  of 
substance/  as  the  '  something  *  from  which  a  certain  set  of 
sensations  result,  and  in  which,  as  sensible  qualities,  they 
inhere.  Strictly  speaking,  however,  according  to  Locke,  that 
which  inheres  in  the  thing  is  not  the  quality,  as  it  is  to  us, 
but  a  power  to  produce  it.  (Book  n.  chap.  vui.  sec.  23,  and 
c.  xxiii.  87.) 

68.  In  calling  a  sensation  or  idea  the  product  of  a  power,  CorreU- 
substance  is  presupposed  just  as  much  as  in  calling  it  a  ^^Jand 
sensible  quality ;  only  that  with  Locke  *  quality  *  conveyed  Bubetanca. 
the  notion  of  inherence  in  the  substance,  power  that  of 
relation  to  an  effect  not  in  the  substance  itself.  '  Secondary 
qualities  are  nothing  but  the  powers  which  mbstances  have  to 
produce  several  ideas  in  us  by  our  senses,  which  ideas  are 
not  in  the  things  themselves,  otherwise  than  as  anything  is 
in  its  cause.'  (Book  n.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  9.)  ^  Most  of  the 
simple  ideas,  that  make  up  our  complex  ideas  of  substances, 
are  only  powers  ....  or  relations  to  other  substances  (or, 
as  he  explains  elsewhere,  *  relations  to  our  perceptions,'  *),  and 
are  not  really  in  the  substance  considered  barely  in  itself.' 
(Book  u.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  87,  and  xxxi.  8.)  That  this  implies 
the  inclusion  of  the  idea  of  cause  in  that  of  substance,  appears 
from  Locke's  statement  that  ^  whatever  is  considered  by  us 
to  operate  to  the  producing  any  particular  simple  idea  which 
did  not  before  exist,  hath  thereby  in  our  minds  the  relation 
of  a  cause.'  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxvi.  sec.  1.)  Thus  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  reality  of  a  simple  idea,  as  that  which  is  not 
made  by  the  subject  of  the  idea,  but  results  from  a  power  in 
a  thing,  is  to  have  the  idea  of  substance  as  cause.  This 
latter  idea  must  be  the  condition  of  the  consciousness  of 
reality.  Kthe  consciousness  of  reality  is  implied  in  the  be- 
ginning of  knowledge,  so  ipust  the  correlative  ideas  be  of 
canse  and  substance. 

64.  On  examining  I^ocke's  second  rehearsal  of  his  theory  flow  do  w« 
in  the  fonrth  book  of  the  Essay— that  *  On  Knowledge '—  J^^^  J^*^ 
we  are  led  to  this  result  quite  as  inevitably  as  in  the  book  lespond  tx) 
*  On  Ideas.'    He  lias  a  special  chapter  on  the   *  reality  of  ^^^^^^ 
human  knowledge,'  where  he  puts  the  problem  thus : — *  It  is 

'  Book  Ti.  chap.  xxi.  sec.  S. 


44  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

liocke's  evident  the  mind  knows  not  things  immediately,  bnt  only  by 
miBwer.  ^^  intervention  of  the  ideas  it  has  of  them.  Our  knowledge 
therefore  is  real  only  so  far  as  there  is  a  conformity  between 
onr  ideas  and  the  reality  of  things.  But  what  shall  be  here 
the  criterion  P  How  shall  the  mind,  when  it  perceives  no- 
thing but  its  own  ideas,  know  that  they  agree  with  things 
themselves  P '  (Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sec.  3.)  It  knows  this,  he 
proceeds  to  show,  in  the  case  of  simple  ideas,  because  ^  since 
the  mind  can  by  no  means  make  them  to  itself,  they  must  be 
the  product  of  things  operating  on  the  mind  in  a  natural 

way Simple  ideas  are  not  fictions  of  our  fancies,  but 

the  natural  and  regular  productions  of  things  without  us, 
really  operating  upon  us ;  and  so  carry  with  them  all  the 
conformity  which  is  intended,  or  which  our  state  requires, 
for  they  represent  to  us  things  under  those  appearances 
which  tiiey  are  fitted  to  produce  in  us ;  whereby  we  are  en- 
abled to  distinguish  the  sorts  of  particular  substances,'  &c. 
&c.  (Book  IV.  chap.  iv.  sec.  4.)  The  whole  force  of  this 
passage  depends  on  the  notion  that  simple  ideas  are  already 
to  the  subject  of  them  not  his  own  making,  but  the  product 
of  a  thing,  which  in  its  relation  to  these  ideas  is  a  ^  particular 
sort  of  substance.'  It  is  the  reception  of  such  ideas,  so 
related,  that  Locke  calls  ^  sensitive  knowledge  of  particular 
existence,'  or  a  *  perception  of  the  mind,  employed  about  the 
particular  existence  of  finite  beings  without  us.'  (Book  iv. 
chap.  iL  sec.  14.)  This,  however,  he  distinguishes  from  two 
other  *  degrees  of  knowledge  or  certainty,'  *  intuition '  and 

*  demonstration,'  of  which  the  former  is  attained  when  the 
agreement  or  disagreement  of  two  ideas  is  perceived  immedi- 
ately, the  latter  when  it  is  perceived  mediately  through  the 
intervention  of  certain  other  agreements  or  disagreements 
(less  or  more),  each  of  which  must  in  turn  be  perceived 
immediately.  Demonstration,  being  thus  really  but  a  series 
of  intuitions,  carries  the  same  certainty  as  intuition,  only  it 
is  a  certainty  which  it  requires  more  or  less  pains  and  atten- 
tion to  apprehend.      (Book  iv.  chap.  ii.  sec.  4.)      Of  the 

*  other  perception  of  the  mind,  employed  about  the  particular 
existence  of  finite  beings  without  us,'  which  *  passes  under 
the  name  of  knowledge,'  he  explains  that  although  '  going 
beyond  bare  probability,  it  reaches  not  perfectly  to  either  of 
the  foregoing  degrees  of  certainty.'  *  There  can  be  nothing 
more  certain,'  he  proceeds,  *  than  that  the  idea  we  receive 


REALITY  OF  KNOWLEDGE.  46 

from  an  external  object  is  in  our  minds ;  this  is  intnitiye 
knowledge.  But  whether  there  be  anything  more  than  barelj 
that  idea  in  our  minds,  whether  we  can  thence  certainly  infer 
the  existence  of  anything  without  us  which  corresponds  to 
that  idea,  is  that  whereof  some  men  think  there  may  be  a 
question  made ;  because  men  may  have  such  ideas  in  their 
minds,  when  no  such  thing  exists,  no  such  object  a£Pects 
their  senses.'     (Book  rv.  chap.  ii.  sec.  14.) 

55.  It  is  clear  that  here  in  his  yery  statement  of  the  ques-  It  nflsiimes 
tion  Locke  begs  the  answer.     If  the  intuitive  certainty  is  ^^  J^' 
that   *  the  idea  we  receive  from  cm  external  object  is  in  our  are  con- 
mindB,''  how  is  it  possible  to  doubt  whether  such  an  object  ^^^^ 
exists  and  affects  our  senses  ?    This  impossibility  of  speaking  things  that 
of  the  simple  idea,  except  as  received  from  an  object,  may  ^^ 
account  for  Locke's  apparent  inconsistency  in  finding  the 
assurance  of  the  reality  of  knowledge   (under  the  phrase 

*  evidence  of  the  senses  *)  just  in  that  *  perception '  which 
reaches  not  to  intuitive  or  demonstrative  certainty,  and  only 

*  passes  under  the  name  of  knowledge.'  In  the  passage  just 
quoted  he  shows  that  he  is  cognizant  of  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  simple  idea  and  the  perception  of  an  existence 
corresponding  to  it,  and  in  consequence  distinguishes  this 
perception  from  proper  intuition,  but  in  the  very  statement 
of  the  distinction  it  eludes  him.  The  simple  idea,  as  he 
speaks  of  it,  becomes  itself,  as  consciously  *  received  from  an 
external  object,'  the  perception  of  existence ;  just  as  we  have 
previously  seen  it  become  the  judgment  of  identity  or  per- 
ception of  the  '  agreement  of  an  idea  with  itself,'  which  is  his 
firat  kind  of  knowledge. 

56.  In  short,  with  Locke  tiie  simple  idea,  the  perception  Livelj 
of  existence  corresponding  to  the  idea,  and  the  judgment  of  J^®"  '^ 
identity,  are  absolutely  merged,  and  in  mutual  involution,  they  must 
sometimes  under  one  designation,  sometimes  under  another,  ^  ®^<** 
are  alike  presented  as  the  beginning  of  knowledge.   As  occa-  ^      '*^' 
sion  requires,  each  does  duty  for  the  other.     Thus,  if  the 

*  reality  of  knowledge  '  be  in  question,  the  simple  idea,  which 
is  given,  \a  treated  as  involving  the  perception  of  existence, 
and  the  reality  is  established.  If  in  turn  this  perception  is 
distinguished  from  the  simple  idea,  and  it  is  asked  whether 

■  I  do  not  now  raise  the  question,  *  intnitiye  certainty '  or  knowledge  a«- 

What  are  here  the  ideas,  which  mnst  be  cording    to    Locke's  definition.      See 

hnmediatelj  perceived  to  agree  or  dis-  below,  paragraphs  59,  1(M,  and  147.  , 

tgree  in  order  to  make  it  a  case  of 


46  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

the  correspondence  between  idea  and  existence  is  properly 
matter  of  knowledge,  the  simple  idea  has  only  to  be  treated 
as  involying  the  judgment  of  identity,  which  again  involves 
that  of  existence,  and  the  question  is  answered.  So  in  the 
context  under  consideration  (Book  iv.  chap.  ii.  sec.  14),  after 
raising  the  question  «xs  to  the  existence  of  a  thing  corres- 
ponding to  the  idea,  he  answers  it  by  the  counter  question, 
*  whether  anyone  is  not  invincibly  conscious  to  himself  of  a 
different  perception,  when  he  looks  on  the  sun  by  day,  and 
thinks  on  it  by  night ;  when  he  actually  tastes  wormwood, 
or  smells  a  rose,  or  only  thinks  on  that  savour  or  odour  ? 
We  as  plainly  find  the  difference  there  is  between  any  idea 
revived  in  our  minds  by  our  own  memory,  and  actually  com- 
ing into  our  minds  by  our  senses,  as  wo  do  between  any  two 
distinct  ideas.'  The  force  of  the  above  lies  in  its  appeal  to 
the  perception  of  identity,  or — ^to  apply  the  language  in 
which  Locke  describes  this  perception — the  knowledge  that 
the  idea  which  a  man  calls  the  smell  of  a  rose  is  the  very 
idea  it  is.*  The  mere  difference  in  liveliness  between  the 
present  and  the  recalled  idea,  which,  as  Berkeley  and  Hume 
rightly  maintained,  is  the  only  difference  between  them  as 
mere  ideas,  cannot  by  itself  constitute  the  difference  between 
the  knowledge  of  the  presence  of  a  thing  answering  to  the 
idea  and  the  knowledge  of  its  absence.  It  can  only  do  this 
if  the  more  lively  idea  is  identified  with  past  lively  ideas  as 
a  representation  of  one  and  the  same  thing  which  ^  agrees 
with  itself*  in  contrast  to  the  multiplicity  of  the  sensations, 
its  signs.  Only  in  virtue  of  this  identification  can  either  the 
liveliness  of  the  idea  show  that  the  thing— the  sun  or  the 
rose — is  there,  or  the  want  of  liveliness  that  it  is  not,  for 
without  it  there  would  be  no  thing  to  be  there  or  not  to  be 
there.  It  is  because  this  identification  is  what  Locke  under- 
stands by  the  first  sort  of  perception  of  agreement  between 
ideas,  and  because  he  virtually  finds  this  perception  again  in 
the  simple  idea,  that  the  simple  idea  is  to  him  the  index  of 
reality.  But  if  so,  the  idea  in  its  primitive  simplicity  is  the 
sign  of  a  thing  that  is  ever  the  same  in  the  same  relations, 
and  we  find  the  *  workmanship  of  the  mind,*  its  inventions 
of  substance,  cause,  and  relation,  in  the  very  rudiments  of 
knowledge. 
Present  57.  With  that  curious  tendency  to  reduplication,  which  is 

'  See  above,  paragraph  25. 


•entsation 


TESTIMONY  OF  THE  SENSES.  47 

one  of  his  characteristics,  Locke,  after  devoting  a  chapter  tt>  ?*^^.^^ 
the  *  reaHtj  of  human  knowledge,'  of  which  the  salient  pas-  of  ezist- 
sage  as  to  simple  ideas  has  been  already  quoted,  has  another  ^^^' 
apon  our  '  knowledge  of  existence.'  Here  again  it  is  the 
sensitive  knowledge  of  things  actually  present  to  our  senses, 
which  with  him  is  merely  a  synonym  for  the  simple  idea, 
that  is  the  prime  criterion.  (Book  iv.  chap.  iii.  sees.  5  and  2, 
and  chap.  ii.  sec.  2.)  After  speaking  of  the  knowledge  of 
our  own  being  and  of  the  existence  of  a  God  (about  which 
more  will  be  said  below),  he  proceeds,  *  No  particular  man 
can  know  the  existence  of  any  other  being,  but  only  when, 
by  actually  operating  upon  him,  it  makes  itself  perceived  by 
him.  For  the  having  the  idea  of  anything  in  our  mind  no 
more  proves  the  existence  of  that  thing,  than  the  picture  of 
a  man  evidences  his  being  in  the  world,  or  the  visions  of  a 
dream  make  thereby  a  true  history.  It  is  therefore  the 
actual  receiving  of  ideas  from  without,  that  gives  us  notice 
of  the  existence  of  other  things,  and  makes  us  know  that 
something  doth  exist  at  that  time  without  us,  which  causes 
that  idea  in  us,  though  perhaps  we  neither  know  nor  consider 
how  it  does  it ;  for  it  takes  not  from  the  certainty  of  our 
senses  and  the  ideas  we  receive  by  them,  that  we  know  not 
the  manner  wherein  they  are  produced ;  e.  g.  whilst  I  write 
this,  I  have,  by  the  paper  affecting  my  eyes,  that  idea  pro- 
duced in  my  mind,  which,  whatever  object  causes,  I  call 
white ;  by  which  I  know  that  the  quality  or  accident  (i.  e. 
whose  appearance  before  my  eyes  always  causes  that  idea) 
doth  really  exist,  and  hath  a  being  without  me.  And  of  this 
the  greatest  assurance  I  can  possibly  have,  and  to  which  my 
faculties  can  attain,  is  the  testimony  of  my  eyes,  which  are 
the  proper  and  sole  judges  of  this  thing,  whose  testimony  I 
haye  reason  to  rely  on,  as  so  certain,  that  I  can  no  more 
doubt  whilst  I  write  this,  that  I  see  white  and  black,  and 
that  something  really  exists  that  causes  that  sensation  in  me, 
than  that  I  write  and  move  my  hand.'  (Book  iv.  chap.  xi. 
sees.  1,  2.) 

58.   Seasons  are  afterwards  given  for  the  assurance  that  B^asons 
the  *  perceptions'  in  question  are  produced  in  us  by  *  exterior  7^y  ^^ 

rt.     j«  •      r«i        /»     .     /  \    .        .1     J    r  .1  testimony 

causes  anectmg  our  senses.      The  nrst  (a)  is,  that  ^  those  most  be 
that  want  the  organs  of  any  sense  never  can  have  the  ideas  ^^msted. 
belonging  to  that  sense  produced  in  their  mind.'     The  next 
(b),  that  whereas  *if  I  turn  my  eyes  at  noon  toward  the  sun. 


48  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

I  cannot  avoid  the  Meas  which  the  light  or  the  sun  then  pro- 
4lace8  in  me ;'  on  the  other  hand,  *  when  my  eyes  are  shut  or 
windows  fast,  as  I  can  at  pleasure  recall  to  my  mixid  the  ideas 
of  light  or  the  sun,  which  former  sensations  had  lodged  in 
my  memory,  so  I  can  at  pleasure  lay  them  by.*  Again  (c), 
'  many  of  those  ideas  are  produced  in  us  with  pain  which 
afterwards  we  remember  without  the  least  o£Eence.  Thus 
the  pain  of  heat  or  cold,  when  the  idea  of  it  is  revived  in 
our  minds,  gives  us  no  disturbance ;  which,  when  felt,  was 
very  troublesome,  and  is  again,  when  actually  repeated; 
which  is  occasioned  by  the  disorder  the  external  object 
causes  in  our  body,  when  applied  to  it.*  Finally  (d),  *  our 
senses  in  many  cases  bear  witness  to  the  truth  of  each  other's 
report,  concerning  the  existence  of  sensible  things  without 
us.  He  that  sees  a  fire  may,  if  he  doubt  whether  it  be  any- 
thing more  than  a  bare  fancy,  feel  it  too.'  Then  comes  the 
conclusion,  dangerously  qualified :  *  When  our  senses  do 
actually  convey  into  our  understandings  any  idea,  we  can- 
not but  be  satisfied  that  there  doth  something  at  that  time 
really  exist  without  us,  which  doth  affect  our  senses,  and  by 
them  give  notice  of  itself  to  our  apprehensive  faculties,  and 
actually  produce  that  idea  which  we  then  perceive ;  and  we 
cannot  so  far  distrust  their  testimony  as  to  doubt  that  such 
collections  of  simple  ideas,  as  we  have  observed  by  our  senses 
to  be  united  together,  actually  exist  together.  But  this 
knowledge  extends  as  far  as  the  present  testimony  of  our 
senses,  employed  about  particular  objects,  that  do  then  affect 
them,  and  no  further.  For  if  I  saw  such  a  collection  of 
simple  ideas  as  is  wont  to  be  called  man,  existing  together 
one  minute  since,  and  am  now  alone ;  I  cannot  be'  certain 
that  the  same  man  exists  now,  since  there  is  no  necessary 
connexion  of  his  existence  a  minute  since  with  his  existence 
now.  By  a  thousand  ways  he  may  cease  to  be,  since  I  had 
the  testimony  of  my  senses  for  his  existence.*  (Book  rv. 
chap.  xi.  sec.  9.) 
How  does  ^^'  ^V^^  *t®  *  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  things,*  thus 
this  ac-  established,  it  has  to  be  remarked  in  the  first  place  that, 
^ko'g^  after  all,  according  to  Locke*s  explicit  statement,  it  is  not 
dcfiniiion  properly  knowledge.  It  is  *  an  assurance  that  deserves  the 
w]^°^"  name  of  knowledge  *  (Book  iv.  chap.  ii.  sec.  14,  and  xi.  sec.  3), 
yet  being  neither  itself  an  intuition  of  agreement  between 
ideas,  nor  resoluble  into  a  series  of  such  intuitions,  the  de- 


HO^IS  KNOWLEDGE  OF  REALITY  POSSIBLE?       49 

finiidon  of  knowledge  ezclades  it.  Only  if  existence  were 
itself  an  ^  idea/  would  the  consciousness  of  the  agreement 
of  the  idea  with  it  be  a  case  of  knowledge ;  but  to  make 
existence  an  idea  is  to  make  the  whole  question  about  the 
agreement  of  ideas,  as  such,  with  existence,  as  such,  unmean- 
ing. To  seek  escape  from  this  dilemma  by  calling  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  agreement  in  question  an  *  assurance  * 
instead  of  knowledge  is  a  mere  verbal  subterfuge.  There 
can  be  no  assurance  of  agreement  between  an  idea  and  that 
which  is  no  object  of  consciousness  at  all.  If,  however, 
existence  is  an  object  of  consciousness,  it  can,  according  to 
Locke,  be  nothing  but  an  idea,  and  the  question  as  to  the 
asmrance  of  agreement  is  no  less  unmeaning  than  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  knowledge  of  it.  The  raising  of  the  question 
in  fact,  as  Locke  puts  it,  implies  the  impossibility  of  answer- 
ing it.  It  cannot  be  raised  with,  any  significance,  unless 
existence  is  external  to  and  other  than  an  idea.  It  cannot 
be  answered  unless  existence  is,  or  is  given  in,  an  object  of 
consciousness,  i.  e.  an  idea. 

60.  As  usual,  Locke  disguises  this  diflSculty  from  himself,  LocIm'b  m- 
because  in  answering  the  question  he  alters  it.   The  question,  ^e^tLti- 
as  he  aska  ity  is  whether,  given  the  idea,  we  can  have  posterior  mony  of 
assurance  of  something  else  corresponding  to  it.     The  ques-  ^q^„  ^ii 
tion,  as  he  anewera  ity  is  whether  the  idea  includes  the  con-  question 
sciousness  of  a  real  thing  as  a  constituent ;  and  the  answer  ^J^!^ 
consists  in  the  simple  assertion,  variously  repeated,  that  it  saper- 
does.     It  is  clear,  however,  that  this  answer  to  the  latter  fi^'** 
question  does  not  answer,  but  renders  unmeaning,  the  ques- 
tion as  it  is  originally  asked.     If,  according  to  Locke's  own 
showing,  there  is  nowhere  for  anything  to  be  found  by  us  but 
in  our  *  ideas  '  or  our  consciousness — if  the  thing  is  given  in 
and  with  the  idea,  so  that  the  idea  is  merely  the  thing  ex 
parte  nastrd — ^then  to  ask  if  the  idea  agrees  with  the  thing  is 
as  futile  as  to  ask*  whether  hearing  agrees  with  sound,  or  the 
voice  with  the  words  it  utters.     That  the  thing  is  so  given  is 
implied  throughout  Locke's  statement  of  the  *  assurance  we 
have  of  the  existence  of  material  beings,'  as  well  as  of  the 
confirmations  of  this  assurance.     If  the  *  idea  which  I  call 
white '  means  the  knowledge  that  *  the  property  or  accident 
(i.  e.  whose  appearance  before  my  eyes  always  causes  that 
idea)  doth  reaJly  exist  and  hath  a  being  without  me,'  then 
consciousness  of  existence — outward,  permanent,  subsi^ntive, 

VOIi.  I.  s 


60 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION, 


Confirma- 
tions of  the 
testimony 
turn  upon 
the  dis- 
linction 
between 
*  impres- 
sion and 
idea.' 


They  de- 

Eind  on 
ngnage 
which  pre- 
supposes 
the  as- 
cription of 
sensation 
to  an  out- 
ward 
cause. 


and  causatiye  existence — is  involved  in  the  idea,  and  no  nl« 
tenor  question  of  agreement  between  idea  and  existence  can 
properly  arise.  But  unless  the  simple  idea  is  so  interpreted, 
the  senses  have  no  testimony  te  give.  If  it  is  so  interpreted, 
no  extraneous  *  reason  te  rely  upon  the  testimony '  can  be 
discovered,  for  such  reason  can  only  be  a  repetition  of  the 
testimony  itself. 

61.  This  becomes  clearer  upon  a  view  of  the  confirmations 
of  the  testimony,  as  Locke  gives  them.  They  all,  we  may 
remark  by  the  way,  presuppose  a  distinction  between  the 
simple  idea  as  originally  represented  and  the  same  as  recalled 
or  revived.  This  distinction,  fixed  by  the  verbal  one  between 
^  impression '  and  ^  idea,'  we  shall  find  constantly  maintained 
and  all-important  in  Hume's  system ;  but  in  Locke,  though 
upon  it  (as  we  shall  see)  rests  his  distinction  between  real 
and  nominal  essence  and  his  confinement  of  general  know- 
ledge to  the  latter,  it  seems  only  te  turn  up  as  an  afterthought. 
In  the  account  of  the  reality  and  adequacy  of  ideas  it  doe* 
not  appear  at  all.  There  the  distinction  is  merely  between 
the  simple  idea,  as  such,  and  the  complex,  as  such,  without 
any  further  discrimination  of  the  simple  idea  as  originally 
produced  from  the  same  as  recalled.  So,  too,  in  the  opening 
account  of  the  reception  of  simple  ideas  (Book  ii.  chap.  xii. 
sec.  1),  *  Perception,'  *  Retention,'  and  *  Discerning'  are  all 
reckoned  together  as  alike  forms  of  the  passivity  of  the  mind, 
in  contrast  with  its  activity  in  combination  and  abstraction, 
though  retention  and  discerning  have  been  previously  de- 
scribed in  terms  which  imply  activity.  In  the  *  confirmations' 
before  us,  however,  the  distinction  between  the  originally 
produced  and  the  revived  is  essential. 

62.  The  first  turns  upon  the  impossibility  of  producing  an 
idea  de  novo  without  the  action  of  sensitive  organs ;  the  two 
next  upon  the  difference  between  the  idea  as  produced  through 
these  organs  and  the  like  idea  as  revived  *at  the  will  of  the 
individual.  It  is  hence  inferred  that  the  idea  as  originally 
produced  is  the  work  of  a  thing,  which  must  exist  in  renum 
naturdf  and  by  way  of  a  fourth  *  confirmation '  the  man  who 
doubts  this  in  the  case  of  one  sensation  is  invited  to  try  it  in 
another.  If,  on  seeing  a  fire,  he  thinks  it  *  bare  fancy,'  i.  e. 
doubts  whether  his  idea  is  caused  by  a  thing,  let  him  put  his 
hand  into  it.  This  last  *  confirmation  '  need  not  be  further 
noticed  here,  since  the  operation  of  ^  producing  thing  is  ap 


ANTITHESIS  BETWEEN  WORKS  OF  NATURE  AND  MAN.  61 

oertaiii  or  as  doubtful  for  one  sensation  as  for  another.^  Two 
certainties  are  not  more  sure  than  one^  nor  can  two  doubts 
make  a  certainty.  The  other  *  confirmations '  alike  lie  in  the 
words  *  product  *  and  *  organ/  A  man  has  a  certain  *  idea  :* 
afterwards  he  has  another  like  it,  but  differing  in  liveliness 
and  in  the  accompanying  pleasure  or  pain.  If  he  already 
has,  or  if  the  ideas  severally  bring  with  them,  the  idea  of  a 
producing  outward  thing  to  which  parts  of  his  body  are 
organs,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  a  self  ^  having  power  ^  on  the 
other,  then  the  liveliness,  and  the  accompanying  pleasure  or 
pain,  may  become  indications  of  the  action  of  the  thing,  as 
their  absence  may  be  so  of  the  action  of  the  man's  self;  but 
not  otherwise.  Locke  throughout^  in  speaking  of  the  simple 
ideas  as  produced  or  recalled,  implies  that  they  carry  with 
them  the  consciousness  of  a  cause,  either  an  outward  thing 
or  the  self,  and  only  by  so  doing  can  he  find  in  them  the 
needful  *  confirmations '  of  the  *  testimony  of  the  senses.' 
This  testimony  is  confirmed  just  because  it  distinguishes 
of  itself  between  the  work  of  ^  nature,'  which  is  real,  and 
the  work  of  the  man,  which  is  a  fiction.  In  other  words, 
the  confirmation  is  nothing  else  than  the  testimony  itself 
— ^a  testimony  which,  as  we  have  seen,  since  it  supposes 
consciousness,  as  such,  to  be  consciousness  of  a  thvngy 
eliminates  by  anticipation  the  question  as  to  the  agreement 
of  consciousness  with  things,  as  with  the  extraneous. 

63.  The  distinction  between  the  real  and  the  fimtastic,  xhis  as- 
according  to  the  passages  under  consideration,  thus  depends  cription 
upon  that  between  the  work  of  nature  and  the  work  of  man.  "J^fngof 
It  is  the  confusion  between  the  two  works  that  renders  the  sensation 
fantastic  possible,  while  it  is  the  consciousness  of  the  distinc-  J^^qi^ 
tion  that  sets  us  upon  correcting  it.     Where  all  is  the  work  relationt. 
of  man  and  professes  to  be  no  more,  as  in  the  case  of '  mixed 
modes,'  there  is  no  room  for  the  fantastic  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxx. 
sec.  4,  and  Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sec.  7) ;    and  where  there  is 
ever  so  much  of  the  fantastic,  it  would  not  be  so  for  us,  un- 
less we  were  conscious  of  a  ^  work  of  nature,'  to  which  to 
oppose  it.     But  on  looking  a  little  closer  we  find  that  to  be 
conscious  of  an  idea  as  the  work  of  nature,  in  opposition  to 

'  To  feel  the  object,  in  the  sense  of  we  oome   to  consider  his    doctrine  of 

tooehing  it,  had  a  special  significance  *  real  essence/  as  constituted  by  primary 

for  Locke,  since  tonch  with  him  was  the  qualities   of  body.     See  below,  para- 

primaij  'reTelation'   of  body,  as  the  graph  101. 
solid.    More  will  be  said  of  this  when 


GENERAL  ENTHODUCTION. 


Wliatis 
meant  by 
restricting 
the  testi- 
mony of 

jfresent  ez- 

isteuee  ? 


the  work  of  man,  is  to  be  conscious  of  it  under  relations 
which,  according  to  Locke,  are  the  inyentions  of  man.  It  is 
nothing  else  than  to  be  conscious  of  it  as  the  result  of  *  some- 
thing haying  power  to  produce  it '  (Book  ii.  chap.  xzzL  sec. 
2),  i.  e.  of  a  substance,  to  which  it  is  related  as  a  quality. 
<  Nature '  is  just  the  *  something  we  know  not  what,'  which 
is  substance  according  to  the  *  ahstract  idea '  ttereof.  Pro- 
ducing ideas,  it  exercises  powers,  as  it  essentially  belongs  to 
substance  to  do,  according  to  our  complex  idea  of  it.  (Book 
IT.  chap,  xxiii.  sees.  9,  10.)  But  substance,  according  to 
Locke,  whether  as  abstract  or  complex  idea,  is  the  *  work- 
manship of  the  mind,'  and  power,  as  a  relation  (Book  ii. 
chap.  xxi.  sec.  8,  and  chap.  xxy.  sec.  8),  *  is  not  contained  in 
the  real  existence  of  things.'  Again,  the  idea  of  substance, 
as  a  source  of  power,  is  the  same  as  the  idea  of  cause. 

*  Whatever  is  considered  by  us  to  operate  to  the  producing 
any  particular  simple  idea,  which  did  not  before  exists  hath 
thereby  in  our  minds  the  relation  of  a  cause.'  (Book  ii.  chap, 
xxvi.  sec.  1.)  But  the  idea  of  cause  is  not  one  *  that  the 
mind  has  of  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,'  but  one  that 
it  gets  by  its  own  act  in  '  bringing  things  to,  and  setting 
them  by,  one  another.'  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxv.  sec.  1.)  Thus 
it  is  with  the  very  ideas,  which  are  the  workmanship  of  man, 
that  the  simple  idea  has  to  be  clothed  upon,  in  order  to  *  tes- 
tify '  to  its  being  real,  L  e.  (in  Locke's  sense)  not  the  work 
of  man. 

64.  Thus  invested,  the  simple  idea  has  clearly  lost  its  sim- 
plicity. It  is  not  the  momentary,  isolated  consciousness, 
but  the  representation  of  a  thing  determined  by  relations  to 
other  things  in  an  order  of  nature,  and  causing  an  infinite 
series  of  resembling  sensations  to  which  a  common  name  is 
applied.  Thus  in  all  the  instances  of  sensuous  testimony 
mentioned  in  the  chapter  before  us,  it  is  not  really  a  simple 
sensation  that  is  spoken  of,  but  a  sensation  referred  to  a 
thing — ^not  a  mere  smell,  or  taste,  or  sight,  or  feeling,  but 
the  smell  of  a  rose,  the  taste  of  a  pine-apple,  the  sight  of 
the  sun,  the  feeling  of  fire.  (Book  iv.  chap.  xi.  sees.  4^7.) 
Immediately  afterwards,  however,  reverting  or  attempting  to 
revert  to  his  strict  doctrine  of  the  mere  individuality  of  the 
simple  idea,  he  says  that  the  testimony  of  the  senses  is  a 

*  present  testimony  employed  about  particular  objects,  that 
do  then  affect  them,'  and  that  sensitive  knowledge  extends 


TESTIMONY  TO  EXISTENCE  IS  NO  TESTIMONY.  6S 

no  fiuriher  than  such  testimony.  This  statement,  taken  by 
itself,  is  ambigaons.  Does  it  mean  that  sensation  testifies 
to  the  momentary  presence  to  the  indiyidual  of  a  continuous 
existence,  or  is  the  existence  itself  as  momentary  as  its  pre- 
sence to  sense  ?  The  instance  that  follows  does  not  remove 
the  doubt.  *  If  I  saw  such  a  collection  of  simple  ideas  as  is 
wont  to  be  called  mcmy  existing  together  one  minute  since, 
and  am  now  alone ;  I  cannot  be  certain  that  the  same  man 
exists  now,  since  there  is  no  necessary  connection  of  his 
existence  a  minute  since  with  his  existence  now.'  (Book  iv. 
chap.  zL  sec.  9.)  At  first  sight,  these  words  might  seem  to 
decide  that  the  existence  is  merely  coincident  with  the  pre- 
sence of  the  sensation — a  decision  fittal  to  the  distinction 
between  the  real  and  fieuatastic,  since,  if  the  thing  is  only 
present  with  the  sensation,  there  can  be  no  combination  of 
qualities  in  reality  other  than  the  momentary  coincidence  of 
sensations  in  us.  Memory  or  imagination,  indeed,  might 
recall  these  in  a  different  order  from  that  in  which  they 
originally  occurred ;  but,  if  this  original  order  had  no  being 
after  the  occurrence,  there  could  be  no  ground  for  contrasting 
it  with  the  order  of  reproduction  as  the  real  with  the  merely 
apparent. 

65.  In  the  very  sentence,  however,  where  Locke  restricts  sueh  re- 
tbe  testimony  of  sensation  to  existence  present  along  with  it,  jj*^^"* 
he  uses  langfuage  inconsistent  with  this  restriction.     The  tained, 
particular  existence  which  he  instances  as  *  testified  to  *  is  "^^ 
that  of  ^  such  a  collection  of  simple  ideas  as  is  wont  to  be  testimony 
called  man.'    But  these  ideas  can  only  be  present  in  succes-  immean- 
sion.  •(See  Book  n.  chap.  vii.  sec.  9,  and  chap.  xiv.  sec.  3.) 
Even  the  surface  of  the  man's  body  can  only  be  taken  in  by 
successive  acts  of  vision ;  and,  more  obviously,  the  states  of 
consciousness  in  which  his  qualities  of  motion  and  action 
are  presented  occupy  separate  times.     If  then  sensation  only 
testifies  to  an  existence  present  along  with  it,  how  can  it 
testify  to  the  co-existence  (say)  of  an  erect  attitude,  of  which 
I  have  a  present  sight,  with  the  risibility  which  I  saw  a 
njinute  ago  ?     How  can  the  *  collection  of  ideas  wont  to  be 
called  man,'  as  co-exisUngy  be  formed  at  all  ?  and,  if  it  cannot, 
how  can  the  present  existence  of  an  object  so-called  be  tes- 
tified to  by  sense  any  more  than  the  past?    The  same  doc- 
trine, which  is  fatal  to  the  supposition  of  ^  a  necessary  con- 
nexion between  the  man's  existence  a  minute  since  and  his 


H  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.   . 

existenoe  now/  is  in  fact  fatal  to  the  supposition  of  his 
existence  as  a  complex  of  qualities  at  all.  It  does  not  merely 
mean  that,  for  anything  we  know,  the  man  may  have  died. 
Of  course  he  may,  and  yet  there  may  be  continuity  of  existence 
according  to  natural  laws,  though  not  one  for  which  we 
have  the  testimony  of  present  sense,  between  the  living  body 
and  the  dead.  What  Locke  had  in  his  mind  was  the  notion 
that,  as  existence  is  testified  to  only  by  present  sensation, 
and  each  sensation  is  merely  individual  and  momentary, 
there  could  be  no  testimony  to  the  continued  existence  of 
anything.  He  could  not,  however,  do  such  violence  to  the 
actual  fabric  of  knowledge  as  would  have  been  implied  in  the 
logical  development  of  this  doctrine,  and  thus  he  allowed 
himself  to  speak  of  sense  as  testifying  to  the  co-existence  of 
sensible  qualities  in  a  thing,  though  the  individual  sensation 
could  only  testify  to  the  presence  of  one  at  a  time,  and  could 
never  testify  to  their  nexus  in  a  common  cause  at  all.  This 
testimony  to  co-existence  in  a  present  thing  once  admitted, 
he  naturally  allowed  himself  in  the  further  assumption  that 
the  testimony,  on  its  recurrence,  is  a  testimony  to  the  same 
co-existence  and  the  same  thing.  The  existence  of  the  same 
man  (he  evidently  supposes),  to  which  sensation  testified  an 
hour  ago,  may  be  testified  to  by  a  like  sensation  now.  This 
means  that  resemblance  of  sensation  becomes  identity  of  a 
thing — that  like  sensations  occurring  at  different  times  are 
interpreted  as  representing  the  same  thing,  which  conti- 
nuously exists,  though  not  testified  to  by  sense,  between  the 
times. 
But  itii  ^^*  ^^  short,  as  we  have  seen  the  simple  idea  of  sensation 

not  main-    emerge  from  Locke's  inquiry  as  to  the  beginning  of  know- 
testh^onj*  ledge  trjuisformed  into  the  judgment,  *  I  have  an  idea  different 
is  to  opera-  from  other  ideas  which  I  did  not  make  for  myself,'  so  now 
tion  of  per-  fyom  the  inquiry  as  to  the  correspondence  between  knowledge 
identical     and  reality  it  emerges  as  the  consciousness  of  a  thing  now 
tilings-        acting  upon  me,  which  has  continued  to  exist  since  it  acted 
on  me  before,  and  in  which,  as  in  a  common  cause,  have 
existed  together  powers  to  affect  me  which  have  never  affected 
me  together.     If  in  the  one  form  the  operation  of  thought 
in  sense,  the  ^  creation  of  the  understanding '  within  the  sim- 
ple idea,  is  only  latent  or  potential,  in  the  other  it  is  actual 
and  explicit.     The  relations  of  substance  and  quality,  of 
cause  and  effect,  and  of  identity— all  *  inventions  of  the 


TESTIMONY  TO  OPERATION  OF  PERMANENT  THINGS.  56 

mind ' — ^are  neoessarilj  inyolved  in  the  inmiediate,  spontar- 
neons  testimony  of  passive  sense. 

67.  It  will  be  noticed  that  it  is  upon  the  first  of  these,  the  Locke's 
relation  of  substance  and  quality,  that  our  examination  of  ^f^iJ" 
Locke's  Essay  has  so  fiur  chiefly  gathered.     In  this  it  follows  tions  of 
the  course  taken  by  Locke  himself.     Of  the  idea  of  substance,  ^^^^ 
eo  nomine,  he  treats  at  large :  of  cause  and  identity  (apart 

from  the  special  question  of  personal  identity)  he  says  littie. 
So,  too,  the  *  report  of  the  senses '  is  commoidy  exhibited  as 
announcing  the  sensible  qualities  of  a  thiiig  rather  than  the 
agency  of  a  cause  or  continuity  of  existence.  The  difference, 
of  course,  is  mainly  verbaL  Sensible  qualities  being,  as  Locke 
constantiy  insists,  nothing  but  ^  powers  to  operate  on  our 
senses '  directiy  or  indirectiy,  the  substance  or  thing,  as  the 
source  of  these,  takes  the  character  of  a  cause.  Again,  as 
the  sensible  quality  is  supposed  to  be  one  and  the  same  in 
manifold  separate  cases  of  being  felt,  it  has  identity  in  con- 
trast with  the  variety  of  these  cases,  even  as  the  thing  has, 
on  its  part,  in  contrast  with  the  variety  of  its  qualities. 
Something,  however,  remains  to  be  said  of  Locke's  treat- 
ment of  the  ideas  of  cause  and  identity  in  the  short  passages 
where  he  treats  of  them  expressly.  Here,  too,  we  shall  find 
the  same  contrast  between  the  given  and  the  invented,  tacitly 
contradicted  by  an  account  of  the  given  in  terms  of  the 
invented. 

68.  The  relation  of  cause  and  eflfect,  according  to  Locke's  Thatftom 
general  statement  as  to  relation,  must  be  something  *  not  con-  J^  dorivef 
tained  in  the  real  existence  of  things,  but  extraneous  and  idea  of 
superinduced.'     (Book  ii.  chap.  xxv.  sec.  8.)     It  is  a  *com-  ^p!|^^ 
plex  idea,'  not  belonging  to  things  as  they  are  in  themselves,  it. 
which  the  mind  makes  by  its  own  act.     (Book  n.  chap  xii. 

sees.  1,  7,  and  chap.  xxv.  sec.  1.)  Its  origin,  however,  is  thus 
described : — *  In  the  notice  that  our  senses  take  of  the  con- 
stant vicissitude  of  things,  we  cannot  but  observe  that  several 
particular,  both  qualities  and  substances,  begin  to  exist ;  and 
that  they  receive  this  their  existence  from  the  due  application 
and  operation  of  some  other  being.  From  this  observation 
we  get  our  ideas  of  cause  and  effect.  That  which  produces 
any  simple  or  complex  idea  we  denote  by  the  general  name 
cause ;  and  that  which  is  produced,  effect.  Thus,  finding 
that  in  that  substance  which  we  call  wax,  fluidity,  which  is 
a  simple  idea  that  was  not  in  it  before,  is  constantly  pro- 


W  GENERAJL  XNTRODUCTIOX, 

daced  by  the  application  of  a  certain  degree  of  heat,  we  call 
the  simple  idea  of  heat,  in  relation  to  fluidity  in  wax,  the 
cause  of  it,  and  fluidity  the  eflFect.  So,  also,  finding  that  the 
substance,  wood,  which  is  a  certain  coUection  of  simple  ideas 
so-called,  by  the  application  of  fire  is  turned  into  another 
substance  called  ashes,  Le.  another  complex  idea,  consisting 
of  a  collection  of  simple  ideas,  quite  different  from  that  com- 
plex idea  which  we  call  wood ;  we  consider  fire,  in  relation 
to  ashes,  as  cause,  and  the  ashes  as  effect.'  Here  we  find 
that  the  ♦  given,'  upon  which  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect 
is  *  superinduced '  or  from  which  the  *  idea  of  it  is  got'  (to 
give  Locke  the  benefit  of  both  expressions),  professedly,  ac- 
cording to  the  first  sentence  of  the  passage  quoted,  involves 
the  complex  or  derived  idea  of  substance.  The  sentence,  in- 
deed, is  a  remarkable  instance  of  the  double  refraction  which 
arises  from  redundant  phraseology.  Our  senses  are  supposed 
to  ^  take  notice  of  a  constant  vicissitude  of  things,'  or  sub- 
stances. Thereupon  we  observe,  what  is  necessarily  implied 
in  this  vicissitude,  a  beginning  of  existence  in  substances  or 
their  qualities,  ^  received  from  the  due  application  or  opera- 
tion of  some  other  being.*  Thereupon  we  infer,  what  is 
simply  another  name  for  existence  thus  given  and  received, 
a  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  Thus  not  only  does  the  dah^m 
of  the  process  of  *  invention'  in  question,  i.e.  the  observation 
of  change  in  a  thing,  involve  a  derived  idea,  but  a  derived 
idea  which  presupposes  just  this  process  of  invention. 
hAtioiialA  69.  Here  again  it  is  necessary  to  guard  against  the  notion 
•"petitlo  *^*  Locke's  obvious  peiitio  principii  might  be  avoided  by 
principii'  a  better  statement  without  essential  change  in  his  doctrine 
of  ideas.  It  is  true  that '  a  notice  of  the  vicissitude  of  things ' 
includes  that  *  invention  of  the  understanding '  which  it  is 
supposed  to  suggest,  but  state  the  primary  knowledge  other- 
wise— ^reduce  the  vicissitude  of  things,  as  it  ought  to  be  re- 
duced, in  order  to  make  Locke  consistent,  to  the  mere  multi- 
plicity of  sensations — and  the  appearance  of  suggestion 
ceases.  Change  or  *  vicissitude '  is  quite  other  than  mere 
diversity.  It  is  diversity  relative  to  something  which  main- 
tains an  identity.  This  identity,  which  ulterior  analysis  may 
find  in  a  *  law  of  nature,'  Locke  found  in  *  things  *  or  *  sub- 
stances.' By  the  same  unconscious  subreption,  by  which 
with  him  a  sensible  thing  takes  the  place  of  sensation,  ^  vi- 
cissitude of  things '  takes  the  place  of  multiplicity  of  sensa*- 


LOCKE'S  DOCTRINE  OF  CAUSE.  67 

tions,  carrjing  with  it  the  obserration  that  the  changed  state 
of  the  thing  is  due  to  something  else.  The  mere  multiplicity 
of  sensations  could  convey  no  such  *  observation/  any  more 
than  the  sight  of  counters  in  a  row  would  convey  the  notion 
that  one  *  received  its  existence '  from  the  other.  Only  so 
fiur  as  the  manifold  appearances  are  referred,  as  its  vicissi- 
tudes, to  something  which  remains  one,  does  any  need  ot 
accounting  for  their  diverse  existence,  or  in  consequence  any 
observation  of  its  derivation  *  from  some  other  being,'  arise. 
Locke,  it  is  true,  after  stating  that  it  is  upon  a  notice  of  the 
vicissitude  of  things  that  the  observation  in  question  rests, 
goes  on  to  speak  as  if  an  origination  of  substances,  which  is 
just  the  opposite  of  their  vicissitude,  might  be  observed ;  and 
the  second  instance  of  production  which  he  gives — ^that  of 
ashes  upon  the  burning  of  wood — seems  intended  for  an  in- 
stance of  the  production  of  a  substance,  as  distinct  from  the 
production  of  a  quality.  He  is  here,  however,  as  he  often 
does,  using  the  term  ^  substance '  loosely,  for  '  a  certain  col- 
lection of  simple  ideas,'  without  reference  to  the '  substratum 
wherein  they  do  subsist,'  which  he  would  have  admitted  to 
be  ultimately  the  same  for  the  wood  and  for  the  ashes.  The 
conception,  indeed,  of  such  a  substratum,  whether  vaguely 
as  *  nature,'  or  more  precisely  as  a  ^  real  constitution  of  in- 
sensible parts '  (Book  in.  chap.  iii.  sees.  18,  &c.),  governed 
all  his  speculation,  and  rendered  to  him  what  he  here  calls 
mibstance  virtually  a  Tnode,  and  its  production  properly  a 
'  vicissitude.* 

70.  We  thus  find  that  it  is  only  so  far  as  simple  ideas  are  ^^^^     . 
referred  to  things — only  so  far  as  eaoh  in  turn,  to  use  Locke's  cause  has 
instance,  is  regarded  as  an  appearance  ^  in  a  substance  which  ^^  P^^. 
was  not  in  it  before ' — ^that  our  sensitive  experience,  the  sup-  tive  ex- 
posed daium  of  knowledge,  is  an  experience  of  the  vicissi-  PT®°*^?^ 
tades  of  things;  and  again,  that  only  as  an  experience  of  ^t  fix>m 
such  vicissitude  does  it  furnish  the  ^  observation  from  which  it. 
we  get  our  ideas  of  cause  .and  effect.'    But  the  reference  of  a 
sensation  to  a  sensible  thing  means  its  reference  to  a  cause. 
In  other  words,  the  invented  relation  of  cause  and  effect 
must  be  found  in  the  primary  experience  in  order  that  it  may 
be  g^t  from  it.  * 

'  Loeke's  eontradiction  of  himself  in  it  his  acooant  of  the  idea  of  power. 

icgud  to  this  relation  might  be  ozhi-  The  two  are  precisely  similar,  the  idea 

bitad  in  a  still  more  striking  light  by  of  power  bein^  represented  as  got  by  a 

putting  tide  by  side  with  his  account  oS  oqtj^i^^Skralt^utiiTis^rf'  aimple  ideas 

^university) 

-CALIFORNIA-  ^-^ 


68  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Origin  of         *^^'  '^^  Same  holds  of  that  other  *  product  of  the  mind/ 
the  idea  of  the  relation  of  identity.    This  *  idea '  according  to  Locke,  is 
Larding    forn^©d  when,  *  considering  anything  as  existing  at  any  de- 
to  Locke,     termined  time  and  place,  we  compare  it  with  itself  existing 
at  another  time.'     *  in  this  consists  identity/  he  adds,  'when 
the  ideas  it  is  attributed  to,  vary  not  at  all  from  what  they 
were  that  moment  wherein  we  consider  their  former  existence, 
and  to  which  we  compare  the  present ;  for  we  never  finding 
nor  conceiving  it  possible  that  two  things  of  the  same  kind 
should  exist  in  the  same  place  at  the  same  time,  we  rightly 
conclude  that  whatever  exists  anywhere,  at  any  time,  excludes 
all  of  the  same  kind,  and  is  there  itself  alone.     When,  there* 
fore,  we  demand  whether  anything  be  the  same  or  no  ?  it 
refers  always  to  something  that  existed  such  a  time  in  such 
a  place,  which  it  was  certain  at  that  instant  was  the  same 
with  itself,  and  no  other ;  from  whence  it  follows  that  one 
thing  cannot  have  two  beginnings  of  existence,  nor  two  things 
one  beginning ;  it  being  impossible  for  two  things  of  the 
same  kind  to  be  or  exist  in  the  same  instant  in  the  very  same 
place,  or  one  and  the  same  thing  in  different  places.     That, 
therefore,  that  had  one  beginning,  is  the  same  thing ;  and 
that  which  had  a  different  beginning  in  time  and  place  from 
that  is  not  the  same,  but  diverse.'     He  goes  on  to  inquire 
about  the  prindpiv/m  indimduatiardsy  which  he  decides  is 
*  existence  itself,  which  determines  a  being  of  any  sort  to  a 
particular  time  and  place,  incommunicable  to  two  beings  of 
the  same  kind  ...  for  being  at  that  instant  what  it  is  and 
nothing  else,  it  is  the  same,  and  so  must  continue  as  long  as 
its  existence  is  continued ;  for  so  long  it  will  be  the  same, 
and  no  other.'     (Book  ii.  chap,  xxvii.  sees.  1 — 3). 
Relation  of       *^^'  ^^  ^**  essential  to  bear  in  mind  with  regard  to  identity, 
identity       as   With  regard  to   cause    and   effect,  that   no   distinction 
°?g/°  ^     according  to  Locke  can  legitimately  be  made  between  the 
tingniflhed  relation  and  the  idea  of  the  relation.     As  to  substance,  it  is 
of^it  ^^**    *'^®'  ^®  ^^  driven  in  his  controversy  with  Stillingfleet  to 
distinguish  between  Hhe  being  and  the  idea  thereof,'  but 
in  dealing  with  relation  he  does  not  attempt  any  such  vio- 
lence to  his  proper  system.     Between  the  4dea'  as  such  and 

in  things  without  (Book  ii.  chap.  xzi.  ought  to  be  complex,  he  reckons  it  a 

sec.  1),  just  as  the  idea  of  cause  and  simple  and  original  one,  and  by  usingit 

effect  is.    Power,  too,  he  expressly  says,  interchangeably  with  '  sensible  quality ' 

is  a  relation.    Yet,  although  the  idea  of  makes  't  a  primary  datum  of  i 
it,  both  as  derived  and  as  of  a  relation. 


HIS  DOCTRINE  OF  IDENTITY.  69 

^ being ^  as  sach,  his  'new  way  of  ideas/  as  Stillingfleet 
plaintively  called  it,  left  no  fair  room  for  distinction.  In 
this  indeed  lay  its  permanent  value  for  speculative  thought. 
The  distinction  by  which  alone  it  could  consistently  seek  to 
replace  the  old  one,  so  as  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  language 
and  knowledge,  was  that  between  simple  ideas,  as  given  and 
necessarily  real,  and  the  reproductions  or  combinations  in 
which  the  mind  may  alter  them.  But  since  every  relation 
implies  a  putting  together  of  ideas,  and  is  thus  always,  as  Locke 
avows,  a  complex  idea  or  the  work  of  the  mind,  a  distinction 
between  its  being  and  the  idea  thereof,  in  that  sense  of  the 
distinction  in  which  alone  it  can  ever  be  consistently  admitted 
by  Locke,  was  clearly  inadmissible.  Thus  in  the  passages 
before  us  the  relation  of  identity  is  not  explicitly  treated  as 
an  original  'being'  or  'existence.'  It  is  an  idea  formed  by 
the  mind  upon  a  certain  '  consideration  of  things'  being  or 
existent.  But  on  looking  closely  at  Locke's  accoimt,  we  find 
that  it  is  only  so  far  as  it  already  belongs  to,  nay  constitutes, 
the  things,  that  it  is  formed  upon  consideration  of  them. 

73.  When  it  is  said  that  the  idea  of  identity,  or  of  any  other  This « in- 
relation,  is  formed  upon  consideration  of  things  as  existing  ▼ented' re- 
in a  certain  way,  this  is  naturally  understood  to  mean — indeed,  forms  the 
otherwise  it  is  unmeaning — that  the  things  are  first  knorvn  as  *^ei7beii^; 
existing,  and  that  afterwards  the  idea  of  the  relation  in  ques-  ^      °^* 
tion  is  formed.     But  according  to  Locke,  as  we  have  seen,* 
the  first  and  simplest  act  of  knowledge  possible  is  the  percep- 
tion of  identity  between  ideas.     Either  then  the  '  things,* 
upon  consideration  of  which  the  idea  of  identity  is  formed, 
are  not  known  at  all,  or  the  knowledge  of  them  involves  the 
very  idea  afterwards  formed  on  consideration  of  them.    Locke, 
having  at  whatever  cost  of  self-contradiction  tx)  make  his 
theory  fit  the  exigencies  of  language,  virtually  adopts  the 
latter  alternative,  though  with  an  ambiguity  of  expression 
which  makes  a  definite  meaning  difficult  to  elicit.    We  have, 
however,  the  positive   statement  to  begin  with,   that  the 
comparison  in  which  the  relation  originates,  is  of  a  thing 
with  itself  as  existing  at  another  time.    Again,  the  '  ideas ' 
(used  interchangeably  with  '  things '),  to  which  identity  is 
attributed,  'vary  not  at  all  from  what  they  were  at  that 
moment  wherein  we  consider  their  former  existence.'    It  is 
here  clearly  implied  that  'things'  or 'ideas' eajw^,  i.e.  are 

*  See  above,  ponograph  25. 


•0  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

given  to  ns  in  the  spontaueons  consciousness  which  we  do 
not  make,  as  each  one  and  the  same  throughout  a  multipliciiy 
of  times.  This,  again,  means  that  the  relation  of  identity  or 
sameness,  Le.  unity  of  thing  under  multiplicity  of  appearance, 
belongs  to  or  consists  in  the  *  very  being  *  of  those  given 
objects  of  consciousness,  which  are  in  Locke's  sense  the  real, 
and  upon  which  according  to  him  all  relation  is  superinduced 
by  an  after-act  of  thought.  So  long  as  each  such  object 
'  continues  to  exist,'  so  long  its  '  sameness  with  itself  must 
continue,'  and  this  sameness  is  the  complex  idea,  the  relation, 
of  identity.  Just  as  before,  following  Locke's  lead,  we  found 
the  simple  idea,  as  the  element  of  knowledge,  become  com- 
plex— a  perceived  identity  of  ideas ;  so  now  mere  existence, 
the  '  very  being  of  things'  (which  with  Locke  is  only  another 
name  for  the  simple  idea),  resolves  itself  iuto  a  relation, 
which  it  requires  'consideration  by  the  mind'  to  constitute. 
Locke  fails  7^-  ^®  process  of  self-  contradiction,  by  which  a '  creation 
todw-  of  the  mind '  finds  its  way  into  the  real  or  given,  must  also 
between  app^OT  in  a  contradictory  conception  of  the  real  itself.  Kept 
identity  pure  of  all  that  Locke  reckons  intellectual  fiction,  it  can  be 
Sft^*"  nothing  but  a  simple  chaos  of  individual  units :  only  by  the 
superinduction  of  relation  can  there  be  sameness,  or  con- 
tinuity of  existence,  in  the  minutest  of  these  for  successive 
moments.  Locke  presents  it  arbitrarily  under  the  conception 
of  mere  individuality  or  of  continuity,  according  as  its  dis- 
tinction from  the  work  of  the  mind,  or  its  intelligible  content, 
happens  to  be  before  him.  A  like  see-saw  in  his  account  of 
the  individuality  and  generality  of  ideas  has  already  been 
noticed.^  In  his  discussion  of  identity  the  contradiction  is 
partly  disguised  by  a  confusion  between  mere  unity  on  the 
one  hand,  and  sameness  or  unity  in  difference,  on  the  other. 
Thus,  after  starting  with  an  account  of  identity  as  belonging 
to  ideas  which  are  the  same  at  different  timesy  he  goes  on  to 
speak  of  a  thing  as  the  same  with  itself,  at  a  smgle  instafU. 
So,  too,  by  the  prindpiv/m  individnmiionisy  he  understands 
'  existence  itself,  which  determines  a  being  of  any  sort  to  a 
particular  time  and  place.'  As  it  is  clear  from  tlie  context 
that  by  the  priruApviim  individ/uationts  he  meant  the  source 
of  identity  or  sameness,  it  will  follow  that  by  '  sameness '  he 
understood  singleness  of  a  thing  in  a  single  time  and  place. 
Whence  then  the  plurality,  without  which  'sameness'  is 

>  See  above,  pangrvphe  43,  and  the  following. 


CAN  mENTITY  BE  REAL  ?  61 

unmeaning  ?  In  fact,  Locke,  having  excladed  it  in  bis  defi- 
iiition,  coyertly  brings  it  back  again  in  bis  instance,  wbicb  is 
that  of '  an  atom,  i.e.  a  continued  body  under  one  immutable 
superficies,  existing  in  a  determined  time  and  place/  This, 
^  considered  in  any  instant  of  its  existence,  is  in  tbat  instant 
tbe  same  with  itself.'  But  it  is  so  because — and,  if  we  suppose 
the  consideration  of  plurality  of  times  excluded,  only  because 
—it  is  a  '  eontinued '  body,  which  implies,  though  its  place  be 
determined,  that  it  exists  in  a  plurality  of  parts  of  space. 
Either  this  plurality,  or  that  of  instants  of  its  existence,  must 
be  recognised  in  contrast  with  the  unity  of  body,  if  this  unity 
is  to  become '  sameness  with  itself.'  In  adding  that  not  only 
at  the  supposed  instant  is  the  atom  the  same,  but  *  so  must 
continue  as  long  as  its  existence  continues,'  Locke  shows  that 
he  really  thought  of  the  identical  body  under  a  plurality  of 
times  ex  parte  posty  if  not  ex  parte  ante. 

75.  But  how  is  this  continuity,  or  sameness  of  existence  in  FeelingB 
plurality  of  times  or  spaces,  compatible  with  the  constitution  JfJ,*^®  , 
of  *  real  existence '  by  mere  individua  f    The  difficulty  is  the  do  not 
same,  according  to  Lockers  premisses,  whether  the  simple  ^mitof 
ideas  by  themselves  are  taken  for  the  real  individtia,  or  How  Sen 
whether  each  is  taken  to  represent  a  single  separate  thing.  ^  i^en- 
In  his  chapter  on  identity  he  expressly  says  that  'things  whose  ^  ^ 
existence  is  in  succession '  do  not  admit  of  identity.     Such, 
he  addSy  are  motion  and  thought ; '  because,  each  perishing 
the  moment  it  begins,  they  cannot  exist  in  different  times  or 
in  different  places  as  permanent  beings  can  at  different  times 
exist  in  distant  places.'    (Book  i.  chap,  xxvii.  sec.  2.)    What 
he  here  calls  *  thought '  clearly  includes  the  passive  conscious- 
ness in  which  alone,  according  to  his  strict  doctrine,  reality 
is  given.    So  elsewhere  (Book  ii.  chap.  vii.  sec.  9),  in  account- 
ing for  the '  simple  idea  of  succession,'  he  says  generally  that 
'  if  we  look  immediately  into  ourselves  we  shall  find  our  ideas 
always,  whilst  we  have  any  thought,  passing  in  train,  one 
going  and  another  coming,  without  intermission.'  ^    No  state- 
ment of  the  'perpetual  flux'  of  ideas,  as  each  having  a  sepa- 
rate beginning  and  end,  and  ending  in  the  very  moment 

*  It  i«  tra«  that  in  this  place  Locke  the  mind '  if  there  is  to  be  any  either 

dittingnishea  between  the  *  snggestion  eenaation  or  idea  at  all  (Book  ii.  chap, 

byonr  senaee' of  the  ideaof  fnicceasion,  ix.  sees.  3  and  4),  the  digtinction  be- 

and  that  which  passes  in  oar  'minds/  tween  the  'suggestion  by  cnr  senses' 

by  which  it  is  '  more  constantly  offered  and  what  *  passes  in  our  minds '  cannot 

ns.'    Bat  since,  according  to  him,  the  be  maintained, 
idea  of  sensation  mnst  be  '  produced  in 


eSr  GENERAL   WTRODUCnON. 

when  it  begins,  can  be  stronger  than  the  above.     If  ^  ideas' 
of  any  sort,  according  to  this  account  of  them,  are  to  consti- 
tute real  existence,  no  sameness  can  be  found  in  reality.    It 
must  indeed  be  a  relation  ^  invented  by  the  mind.' 
Yet  it  IS  76.  This,  it  may  be  said,  is  just  the  conclusion  that  was 

Eli™thafc  wanted  in  order  to  make  Locke's  doctrine  of  the  particular 
the  idea  of  relation  of  identity  correspond  with  his  general  doctrine  of 
d^  ,  the  fictitiousness  of  relations.  To  complete  the  consistency, 
however,  his  whole  account  of  the  origin  of  the  relation  (or 
of  the  idea  in  which  it  consists)  must  be  changed,  since  it 
supposes  it  to  be  derived  from  an  observation  of  things  or 
existence,  which  again  is  to  suppose  sameness  to  be  in  the 
things  or  to  be  real.  This  change  made,  philosophy  would 
have  to  start  anew  with  the  problem  of  accounting  for  the 
origin  of  the  fictitious  idea.  It  would  have  to  explain  how  it 
comes  to  pass  that  the  mind,  if  its  function  consists  solely  in 
reproducing  and  combining  given  ideas,  or  again  in  ^  ab- 
stracting '  combined  ideas  from  each  other,  should  be  able 
to  invent  a  relation  which  is  neither  a  given  idea,  nor  a  re- 
production, combination,  or  abstract  residuum  of  given  ideas. 
This  is  the  great  problem  which  we  shall  find  Hume  attempt- 
ing. Locke  really  never  saw  its  necessity,  because  the 
dominion  of  language — a  donunion  which,  as  he  did  not 
recognise  it,  he  had  no  need  to  account  for — always,  in  spite 
of  his  assertion  that  simple  ideas  are  the  sole  data  of  con- 
sciousness, held  him  to  the  belief  in  another  datum  of  which 
ideas  are  the  appearances,  viz.,  a  thing  having  identity,  be- 
cause the  same  with  itself  in  the  manifold  times  of  its 
appearance.  This  datum,  under  various  guises,  but  in  each 
demonstrably,  according  to  Locke's  showing,  a  *  creation  of 
thought,'  has  met  us  in  all  the  modes  of  his  theory,  as  the 
condition  of  knowledge.  As  the  ^abstract  idea'  of  sub- 
stance it  rendera  ^  perishing '  ideas  into  qualities  by  which 
objects  may  be  discerned.  (Book  xi.  chap.  xi.  sec.  1.)  As 
the  relative  idea  of  cause,  it  makes  them  ^  affections '  to  be 
accounted  for.  As  the  fiction  of  a  universal,  it  is  the  condi- 
tion of  their  mutual  qualification  as  constituents  of  a  whole. 
Finally,  as  the  'superinduced'  relation  of  sameness,  the 
direct  negative  of  the  perpetual  beginning  and  ending  of 
*  ideas,'  it  constitutes  the  *  very  being  of  things.' 
J^I^Wb  ^7.  *  The  very  being  of  things,'  let  it  be  noticed,  according 
doctrine  of  to  what  Locke  reckoned  their  *  real,'  as  distinct  from  their 


LOGEFS  DOCTRINE  OF  ESSENCE.  68 

*  nominal,*  essence.  The  consideration  of  this  distinction 
has  been  hitherto  postponed ;  but  the  discussion  of  the  rela- 
tion of  identity,  as  subsisting  between  the  parts  of  a  '  con- 
tinned  body/  brings  ns  upon  the  doctrine  of  matter  and  its 
'  primary  qualities,'  which  cannot  be  properly  treated  except 
in  connection  with  the  other  doctrine  (which  Locke  unhap- 
pily kept  apart)  of  the  two  sorts  of  ^  essence.'  So  far,  it  will 
be  remembered,  the  ^  facts '  or  given  ideas,  which  we  have 
found  him  unawares  converting  into  theories  or  '  invented  ' 
ideas,  have  been  those  of  the  ^  secondary  qualities  of  body." 
It  is  these  which  are  united  into  things  or  substances, 
having  been  already  'found  in  them :'  it  is  from  these  that 
we  'infer'  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  because  as 
<  vicissitudes  of  things '  or  '  affections  of  sense '  they  pre- 
suppose it :  it  is  these  again  which,  as  '  received  from  with- 
out^' testify  the  present  existence  of  something,  because  in 
being  so  received  they  are  already  interpreted  as  'appear- 
ances of  something.'  That  the  '  thing,'  by  reference  to  which 
these  ideas  are  judged  to  be  '  real,'  '  adequate,'  and  '  true ' — 
or,  in  other  words,  become  elements  of  a  knowledge — is  yet 
itself  according  to  Locke's  doctrine  of  substance  and  rela- 
tion a  'fiction  of  thought,'  has  been  sufficiently  shown. 
That  it  is  so  no  less  according  to  his  doctrine  of  essence  will 
also  appear.  The  question  ^vill  then  be,  whether  by  the 
same  showing  the  ideas  of  body,  of  the  self,  and  of  God,  can 
be  other  than  fictions,  and  the  way  will  be  cleared  for  Hume's 
philosophic  adventure  of  accounting  for  them  as  such. 

78.  In  Locke's  doctrine   of   'ideas  of   substances,'  the  Thisw- 
'  thing '  appeared  in  two  inconsistent  positions  :  on  the  one  P®*^  *■?*• 
hand,  as  that  m  which  they  '  are  found ; '  on  the  other,  as  tencj 
that  which  results  from  their  concretion,  or  which,  such  f°^**™ 
concretion  having  been  made,  we  accustom  ourselves  to  trine  of 
suppose  as  its  basis.     This  inconsistency,  latent  to  Locke  Bulwtanca, 
himself  in  the  theory  of  substance,  comes  to  the  surface  in 

the  theory  of  essence,  where  it  is  (as  he  thought)  overcome, 
but  in  truth  only  made  more  definite,  by  a  distinction  of 
terms. 

79.  This  latter  theory  has  so  far  become  part  and  parcel  Flan  to  b« 
of  the  *  common  sense '  of  educated  men,  that  it  might  seem  followed. 
scarcely  to  need  restatement.     It  is  generally  regarded  as 
eoiupleting  the  work,  which  Bacon  had  begun,  of  transferring 

■  See  above,  paragraph  20. 


64  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

philosophy  from  the  scholastic  bondage  of  words  to  the  fraitful 
discipline  of  facts.  In  the  process  of  transmission  and 
popular  adaptation,  however,  its  trne  significance  has  been 
lost  sight  of,  and  it  has  been  forgotten  that  to  its  original 
exponent  implicitly — explicitly  to  his  more  logical  disciple — 
though  it  did  indeed  distinguish  effectively  between  things 
and  the  meaning  of  words,  it  was  the  analysis  of  the  latter 
^ ,  only,  and  not  the  understanding  of  things,  that  it  left  as  the 
•\^  possible  function  of  knywledg^e.      It  will  be  well,  then,  in 

^  what  follows,  first  briefly  to  restate  the  theory  in  its  general 

form ;  then  to  show  how  it  conflicts  with  the  actual  know- 
ledge which  mankind  supposes  itself  to  have  attained ;  and 
finally  to  exhibit  at  once  the  necessity  of  this  conflict  as  a 
result  of  Locke's  governing  ideas,  and  the  ambiguities  by 
which  he  disguised  it  from  himself. 
What  80.  The  essence  of  a  thing  with  Locke,  in  the  only  sense 

^^  ,  in  which  we  can  know  or  intelligibly  speak  of  it,  is  the 
by  es-  meaning  of  its  name.  This,  again,  is  an  *  abstract  or  general 
nence.'  idea,'  which  means  that  it  is  an  idea  'separated  from  the 
circumstances  of  time  and  place,  and  any  other  ideas  that 
may  determine  it  to  this  or  that  particular  existence.  By 
this  way  of  abstraction  it  is  made  capable  of  representing 
more  individuals  than  one ;  each  of  which,  having  in  it  a 
conformity  to  that  abstract  idea,  is  (as  we  call  it)  of  that 
sort.'  (Book  III.  chap.  iii.  sec.  6.)  That  which  is  given  in 
immediate  experience,  as  he  proceeds  to  explain,  is  this  or 
that  'particular  existence,'  Peter  or  James,  Mary  or  Jane, 
such  particular  existence  being  already  a  complex  idea.* 
That  it  should  be  so  is  indeed  in  direct  contradiction  to  his 
doctrine  of  the  primariness  of  the  simple  idea,  but  is  necessary 
to  his  doctrine  of  abstraction.  Some  part  of  the  complex 
idea  (it  is  supposed) — ^less  or  more — we  proceed  to  leave  out. 
The  minimum  of  subtraction  would  seem  to  be  that  of  the 
'  circumstances  of  time  and  place,'  in  which  the  particular 
existence  is  given.  This  is  the  '  separation  of  ideas,'  first 
made,  and  alone  suffices  to  constitute  an  'abstract  idea,* 
even  though,  as  is  the  case  with  the  idea  of  the  sun,  there  is 
only  one  '  particular  substance '  to  agree  with  it.  (Book  in. 
chap.  vi.  sec.  1.)  In  proportion  as  the  particular  substances 
compared  are  more  various,  the  subtraction  of  ideas  is 
larger,  but,  be  it  less  or  more,  the  remainder  is  the  abstract 
*  Book  ni.  chap.  HL  sec  7,  at  the  end. 


NOMmAL  AND  R£AL  ESSENCK  66 

idea»  to  which  a  name — e.g.  man — is  annexed,  and  to  which 
u  a '  species '  or  ^  standard  '  other  particular  existences,  on 
being  *  found  to  agree  with  it,'  may  be  referred,  so  as  to  be 
called  by  the  same  name.  These  ideas  then, '  tied  together 
by  a  name,'  form  the  essence  of  each  particular  existence,  to 
which  the  same  name  Ls  applied  (Book  iii.  chap.  iii.  sees.  1 2 
and  the  following.)  Such  essence,  howeyer,  according  to 
Locke,  is  ^  nominal,'  not  *  real.'  It  is  a  complex — ^fuller  or 
emptier— of  ideas  in  us,  which,  though  it  is  a  ^uniting 
medium  between  a  general  name  and  particular  beings,'  ^  in 
no  way  represents  the  qualities  of  the  latter.  These,  consist- 
ing in  an  *  internal  constitution  of  insensible  parts,'  form  the 
^  real  essence '  of  the  particuhur  beings ;  an  essence,  how- 
erer,  of  which  we  can  know  nothing.  (Book  in.  chap.  yi. 
sec.  21,  and  ix.  sec.  12.) 

81.  It  is  the  formation  of '  nominal  essences '  that  renders  qqi.  ^o 
general    propositions  possible.      *  General  certainty,'   says  nominal 
Locke,  *  is  never  to  be  found  but  in  our  ideas.    Whenever  JJaT^*" 
we  go  to  seek  it  elsewhere  in  experiment  or  observation  general 
without  lis,  our  knowledge  goes  not  beyond  particulars.     It  §^{J^ 
is  the  contemplation  of  our  own  abstract  ideas,  that  alone  is  late, 
able  to  afford  us  general  knowledge.'     (Book  iv.  chap.  vi. 
sec  16.)     *  General  knowledge,'  he  says  again,  *  lies  only  in 
our  own  thoughts.'*     (Book  iv.  chap.  vi.  sec.  13.)     This  use 
of  *  our  ideas '  and  *  our  own  thoughts '  as  equivalent  phrases, 
each  antithetical  to  ^  real  existence,'  tells  the  old  tale  of  a 
deviation  from  '  the  new  way  of  ideas '  into  easier  paths. 
According  to  this  new  way  in  its  strictness,  as  we  have  suffi- 
ciently seen,  there  is  nowhere  for  anything  to  be  found  but 
^  in  our  ideas.'    It  therefore  in  no  way  distinguishes  general 
knowledge  or  certainty  that  it  cannot  be  found  elsewhere. 
Locke,  however,  having  allowed  himself  in  tbe  supposition 
that  simple  ideas  report  a  real  existence,  other  than  them- 
selves, but  to  which  they  are  related  as  ectype  to  archetype, 
tacitly  proceeds  to  convert  them  into  real  existences,  to 
which  ideas  in  general,  as  mere  thoughts  of  our  own,  may  be 
opposed.    Along  with  this  conversion,  there  supervenes  upon 
the  original  distinction  between  simple  and  complex  ideas, 
which  alone  does  duty  in  the  Second  Book  of  the  Essay, 
another  distinction,  essential  to  Locke's  doctrine   of  the 
*  reality'  of  knowledge — that  between  the   idea,  whether 

'  Bookni.  ehap.  iii.  see.  13.  *  Cf.  Book  it.  chap.  iii.  sec.  81. 

VOL.  I.  P 


66 


GENERAL  XNTRODUCnON. 


I.e.  only  to 
abstract 
ideas 
having  no 
real  exis- 
tence. 


An  ab- 
stract  idea 
may  be  a 
simple  one. 


simple  or  complex,  as  originally  given  in  sensation,  and  the 
same  as  retained  or  reproduced  in  the  mind.  It  is  only  in 
the  former  form  thab  the  idea,  howeyer  simple,  reports,  and 
thus  (with  Locke)  itself  is,  a  real  existence.  Such  real  ex- 
istence is  a  *  particular '  existence,  and  our  knowledge  of  it 
a  '  particular '  knowledge.  In  other  words,  according  to  the 
only  consistent  doctrine  that  we  have  been  able  to  elicit  from 
Locke,  Mt  is  a  knowledge  which  consists  in  a  consciousness, 
upon  occasion  of  a  present  sensation — say,  a  sensation  of 
redness — ^that  some  object  is  present  here  and  now  causing 
the  sensation ;  an  object  which,  accordingly,  must  be  *  par- 
ticular '  or  transitory  as  the  sensation.  The  *  here  and  now,* 
ap  in  such  a  case  they  constitute  the  particularity  of  the 
object  of  consciousness,  so  also  render  it  a  real  existence. 
Separate  these  (*  the  circumstances  of  time  and  place '  *) 
from  it,  and  it  at  once  loses  its  real  existence  and  becomes  an 
*  abstract  idea,'  one  of  '  our  own  thoughts,'  of  which  as  *  in 
the  mind '  agi*eement  or  disagreement  with  some  other  ab- 
stract idea  can  be  asserted  in  a  general  proposition ;  e.g.  *  red 
is  not  blue.'     (Book  iv.  chap.  vii.  sec.  4.)* 

82.  It  is  between  simple  ideas,  it  will  be  noticed,  that  a 
relation  is  here  asserted,  and  in  this  respect  the  proposition 
differs  from  such  an  one  as  maybe  formed  when  simple  ideas 
have  been  compounded  into  the  nominal  essence  of  a  thing, 
and  in  which  some  one  of  these  may  be  asserted  of  the 
thing,  being  already  included  within  the  meaning  of  its 
name ;  e.g.  '  arose  has  leaves.'  But  as  expressing  a  relation 
between  ideas  'abstract'  or  'in  the  mind,'  in  distinction 
from  present  sensations  received  from  without,  the  two  sorts 
of  proposition,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  Locke's  Fourth 
Book,  stand  on  the  same  footing.^  It  is  a  nominal  essence 
with  which  both  alike  are  concerned,  and  on  this  depends 
the  general  certainty  or  self-evidence,  by  which  they  are 
distinguished  from  *  experiment  or  observation  without  us.' 
These  can  never  *  reach  with  certainty  farther  than  the  bare 


*  See  above,  paragraph  56. 

*  Book  III.  chap.  iii.  sec.  6. 

'  In  case  there  should  be  any  doubt 
as  to  Locke's  meaning  in  this  passage, 
it  may  be  well  to  compare  Book  it. 
diap.  ix.  sec.  1.  There  he  distinctly 
opposes  tlie  consideration  of  ideas  in  the 
understanding  to  the  knowledge  of  real 
•ziHtADce.     Here  (Book  it.  chap.  vii. 


sec.  4)  he  distinctly  speaks  of  the  pro- 
position *  red  is  not  blue '  as  expressing 
a  consideration  of  ideas  in  the  under- 
standing. It  follows  that  it  is  not  a 
proposition  as  to  real  existence. 

*  Already  in  Book  ii.  (chap.  xxxi.  sec 
12),  the  simple  idea,  as  abstract,  it 
spoken  of  as  a  nomiiud  essence. 


NO  GENERAL  PROPOSITIONS  ABOUT  MATTER  OF  FACT.  67 

instance '  (Book  rv.  chap.  vi.  sec.  7) :  i.e.,  thoagli  the  only 
channels  by  which  we  can  reach  real  existence,  they  can 
ner^  tell  more  than  the  presence  of  this  or  that  sensation 
as  caused  by  an  unknown  thing  without,  or  the  present  dis- 
agreement of  such  present  sensations  with  each  other.  As 
to  the  recurrence  of  such  sensations,  or  any  permanently 
real  relation  between  them,  they  can  tell  us  nothing. 
Nothing  as  to  their  recurrence,  because,  though  in  each  case 
they  show  the  presence  of  something  causing  the  sensations^ 
they  show  nothing  of  the  real  essence  upon  which  their 
recurrence  depends.'  Nothing  as  to  any  permanently  real 
relation  between  them,  because,  although  the  disagreement 
between  ideas  of  blue  and  red,  and  the  agreement  between 
one  idea  of  red  and  another,  as  in  the  mind^  is  self-evident, 
yet  as  thus  in  the  mind  they  are  not  ^  actual  sensations '  at 
all  (Book  IV.  chap.  xi.  sec.  6),  nor  do  they  convey  that 
'sensitive  knowledge  of  particular  existence,'  which  is  the  only 
possible  knowledge  of  it.  (Book  iv.  chap.  iii.  sec»  21.)  As 
actual  sensations  and  indices  of  reality,  they  do  indeed 
differ  in  this  or  that '  bare  instance,'  but  can  convey  no  cer- 
tainty that  the  real  thing  or  *  parcel  of  matter '  (Book  in. 
chap.  iii.  sec.  18),  which  now  causes  the  sensation  of  (and 
thus  is)  red,  may  not  at  another  time  cause  the  sensation  of 
(and  thus  he)  blue.* 

83.  We  thus  come  upon  the  cracial  antithesis  between  How  then 
relations  of  ideas  and  matters  of  fact,  with  the  exclusion  of  "  science 
general  certainty  as  to  the  latter,  which  was  to  prove  such  possible? 
a  potent  weapon  of  scepticism  in  the  hands  of  Hume.     Of 

^  Cf.  Book  IT.  chap.  yi.  see.  5.    '  If  simple  ideas  have  been  found  to  coexist 

we  could  certainly  know  (which  is  im-  in  any  substance,  these  we  may  with 

poosible)  where  a  leal  essence,  which  confidence  join  together  again,  and  so 

we  know  not,  is— e.g.  in  what  parcels  make  abstract  ideas  of  substances.   For 

of  matter  the  real  essence  of  gold  is ;  whatever  hare  onoe  had  an  union  in 

yet  eould  we  not  be  sure,  that  this  or  nature,  may  be  united  again.'    In  aU 

that  quality  could  with  truth  be  affirmed  such  passages,  howerer,  as  will  appear 

of  gold ;  since  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  below,  the  strict  opposition  between  the 

know  that  this  or  that  quality  or  idea  real  and  the  mental  is  lost  sisht  of,  the 

has  a  necessary  connexion  with  a  real  *  nature '  or  '  substance,'  in  ¥mich  ideas 

fesence,  of  which  we  hare  no  idea  at  '  have  a  union,'  or  are  '  found  to  coexist.,' 

alL'  being  a  system  of  relations  which,  ac- 

Sereral  passages,  of  course,  can  be  cording  to  Locke,  it  requires  a  mind  to 

adduced  from  Locke  which  are  incon-  constitute,  and  thus  itself  a  '  nominal 

sistent  with  the  statement  in  the  text:  essence.' 

e^.  Book  IT.  chap.  iv.  sec  12.      'To  'Of.  Book  it.  chap.  iii.    see.    29; 

Btake  knowledge  real  concerning  sub-  Book  nr.  chap.  Ti.  sec.  14;  Book  iv. 

stances,  the  ideas  must  be  taken  from  chap.  xi.  sec.  11. 
the  real  existence  of  things.    Whatever 

r  2 


No'imi- 


d8  GENERAI.  INTRODUCTION. 

its  incompatibility  with  recognized  science  we  can  Iiave  no 
stronger  sign  than  the  fact  that,  after  more  than  a  century 
has  elapsed  since  Locke's  premisses  were  pushed  to  their 
legitimate  conclusion,  the  received  system  of  logic  among 
Qs  is  one  which,  while  professing  to  accept  Locke's  doctrine 
of  essence,  and  with  it  the  antithesis  in  question,  throughout 
assumes  the  possibility  of  general  propositions  as  to  matters 
of  fact,  and  seeks  in  their  methodical  discovery  and  proof 
that  science  of  nature  which  Locke  already  ^  suspected '  to 
be  impossible.     (Book  iv.  chap.  xii.  sec.  10.) 

84.  That,  so  far  as  any  inference  from  past  to  future 
formidM  '  Uniformities  is  necessary  to  the  science  of  nature,  his  doctrine 
ofpheno-  floes  more  than  justify  such  'suspicion,'  is  plain  enough. 
b»  known.  Does  it,  however,  leave  room  for  so  much  as  a  knowledge  of 
past  uniformities  of  fact,  in  which  the  natural  philosopher, 
accepting  the  doctrine^  might  probably  seek  refuge  P  At 
first  sight,  it  might  seem  to  do  so.  '  As,  when  our  senses 
are  actually  employed  about  any  object,  we  do  know  that  it 
does  exist ;  so  by  our  memory  we  may  be  assured  that  here- 
tofore things  that  affected  our  senses  have  existed — and 
thus  we  have  knowledge  of  the  past  existence  of  several 
things,  whereof  our  senses  having  informed  us,  our  memories 
still  retain  the  ideas.'  (Book  iv.  chap.  xi.  sec.  11.)  Let  us 
see,  however,  how  this  knowledge  is  restricted.  *  Seeing 
water  at  this  instant,  it  is  an  unquestionable  truth  to  me 
that  water  doth  exist;  and  remembering  that  I  saw  it 
yesterday,  it  will  also  be  always  true,  and  as  long  as  my 
memory  retains  it,  always  an  undoubted  proposition  to  me, 
that  water  did  exist  the  18th  of  July,  1688 ;  as  it  will  also 
be  equally  true  that  a  certain  number  of  very  fine  colours 
did  exist,  which  at  the  same  time  I  saw  on  a  bubble  of  that 
water ;  but  being  now  quite  out  of  sight  both  of  the  water 
and  bubbles  too,  it  is  no  more  certainly  known  to  me  that 
the  water  doth  now  exist,  than  that  the  bubbles  and  colours 
tlierein  <lo  so ;  it  being  no  more  necessary  that  water  should 
exist  to-day  because  it  existed  yesterday,  than  that  the 
colours  or  bubbles  exist  to-day  because  they  existed  yester- 
day.'—(liti.) 

85.  The  result  is  that  though  I  may  enumerate  a  multi- 
awaro  of  ^^^  ^^  P^^  matters-of-fact  about  water,  I  cannot  gather 
the  ftiU  them  up  in  any  general  statement  about  it  as  a  real  exist- 
hb^wn      ence.    So  soon  as  I  do  8o«  I  pass  from  water  as  a  seal 

doetriiit. 


IS  A  SCIENCE  OF  NATURE  POSSIBLE?  » 

ezifltenoe  to  its  'nominal  essence,'  i.e.,  to  the  ideas  retained 
in  my  mind  and  put  together  in  a  fictitious  substance,  to 
which  I  have  annexed  the  name  *  water.*  If  we  proceed  to 
apply  this  doctrine  to  the  supposed  past  matters-of-fact 
themselves,  we  shall  find  these  too  attenuating  themselves 
to  nonentity.  Subtract  in  every  case  from  the  *  particular 
existence'  of  which  we  have  'sensitive  knowledge'  the 
qualifiication  by  ideas  which,  as  retained  in  the  mind,  do  not 
testify  to  a  present  real  existence,  and  what  remains  ?  There 
is  a  certainty,  according  to  Locke  (Book  iv.  chap.  xi.  sec. 
11),  not,  indeed,  that  water  exists  to-day  because  it  existed 
yesterday — this  is  only  *  probable  ' — but  that  it  has,  as  a  past 
matter-of-fact,  at  this  time  and  that  '  continued  long  in 
existence,'  because  this  has  been  '  observed ; '  which  must 
mean  (Sook  iv.  chap.  ii.  sees.  1,  5,  and  9),  because  there  has 
been  a  continued  *  actual  sensation '  of  it.  *  Water,'  how- 
ever, is  a  complex  idea  of  a  substance,  and  of  the  elements 
of  this  complex  idea  those  only  which  at  any  moment  are 
given  in  'actual  sensation'  may  be  accounted  to  'really 
exist.'  Firsts  then,  must  disappear  from  reality  the  '  some- 
thing,' that  unknown  substratum  of  ideas,  of  which  the  idea 
is  emphatically  '  abstract.'  This  gone,  we  naturally  fall  back 
upon  a  fact  of  co-existence  between  ideas,  as  being  a  reality, 
though  the  '  thing '  be  a  fiction.  But  if  this  co-existence  is 
to  be  real  or  to  represent  a  reality,  the  ideas  between  which 
it  obtains  must  be  '  actual  sensations.'  These,  whatever  they 
may  be,  are  at  least  opposed  by  Locke  to  ideas  retained  in 
the  mind,  which  only  form  a  nominal  essence.  But  it  is  the 
association  of  such  nominal  essence,  in  the  supposed  observa- 
[  tion  of  water,  with  the  actual  sensation  that  alone  gives  the 
latter  a  meaning.  Set  this  aside  as  unreal,  and  the  reality, 
which  the  sensation  reveals,  is  at  any  rate  one  of  which 
nothing  can  be  said.  It  cannot  be  a  relation  between  sensa- 
tions, for  such  relation  implies  a  consideration  of  them  by 
the  mind,  whereby,  according  to  Locke,  they  must  cease  to 
be  '  real  existences.'  (Book  n.  chap.  xxv.  sec.  1.)  It  cannot 
even  be  a  single  sensation  as  contimtously  dbserved,  for  every 
present  moment  of  such  observation  has  at  the  next  become 
a  past,  and  thus  the  sensation  observed  in  it  has  lost  its 
'actuality,'  and  cannot,  as  a  ^real  eadstencSy  qualify  the 
sensation  observed  in  the  next.  Bestrict  the  '  real  exist- 
ence/ in  short,  as  Locke  does,  to  an  '  actual  present  sensa- 


70  GENERAL  INTRODUCTIOX. 

tion/  which  can  only  be  defined  by  opposition  to  an  idea 
retained  in  the  mind,  and  at  every  instant  of  its  existence 
it  has  passed  into  the  mind  and  thus  ceased  really  to  exist. 
Beality  is  in  perpetual  process  of  disappearing  into  the  un- 
reality of  thought.  No  point  can  be  fixed  either  in  the  flux  of 
time  or  in  the  imaginary  process  from  *  without '  to  *  within  * 
the  mind,  on  the  one  side  of  which  can  be  placed  *  real  exis- 
tence/ on  the  other  the  *  mere  idea.*  It  is  only  because  Locke 
unawares  defines  to  himself  the  ^  actual  sensation  ^  as  repre- 
sentative of  a  real  essence,  of  which,  however,  according  to 
him,  as  itself  unknown,  the  presence  is  merely  inferred  from 
>the  sensation,  that  the  ^  actual  sensation '  itself  is  saved  from 
i  the  limbo  of  nominal  essence,  to  which  ideas,  as  abstract  or 
^in  the  mind,  are  consigned.  Only,  again,  so  far  as  it  is  thus 
illogically  saved,  are  we  entitled  to  that  distinction  between 
*  facts '  and  *  things  of  the  mind,*  which  Locke  once  for  all 
fixed  for  English  philosophy, 
wbich  is,  86.  By  this  time  we  are  familiar  with  the  difficulties  which 
to  make  ^j^jg  antithesis  has  in  store  for  a  philosophy  which  yet  admits 
abstract  that  it  is  Only  in  the  mind  or  in  relation  to  consciousness 
residuum  — in  Q^ie  word,  as  *  ideas  * — that  facts  are  to  be  found  at 
oasness!"  ^\  while  by  the  *  mind '  it  understands  an  abstract  generali- 
zation from  the  many  minds  which  severally  are  bom  and 
grow,  sleep  and  wake,  with  each  of  us.  The  antithesis 
itself,  like  every  other  form  in  which  the  impulse  after  true 
knowledge  finds  expression,  implies  a  distinction  between 
the  seeming  and  the  real ;  or  between  that  which  exists  for 
the  consciousness  of  the  individual  and  that  which  really 
exists.  But  outside  itself  consciousness  cannot  get.  It  is 
there  that  the  real  must,  at  any  rate,  manifest  itself,  if  it  is 
to  be  found  at  all.  Yet  the  original  antithesis  between  the 
mind  and  its  unknown  opposite  still  prevails,  and  in  conse- 
quence that  alone  which,  though  indeed  in  the  mind,  is  yet 
given  to  it  by  no  act  of  its  own,  is  held  to  represent  the  real. 
This  is  the  notion  which  dominates  Locke.  He  strips  from 
the  formed  content  of  consciousness  all  that  the  mind  seems 
to  have  done  for  itself,  and  the  abstract  residuum,  that  of 
which  the  individual  cannot  help  beiug  conscious  at  each 
moment  of  his  existence,  is  or  *  reports '  the  real,  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  mind's  creation.  This  is  Feeling;  or  more 
strictly — since  it  exists,  and  whatever  does  so  must  exist  as 
one  in  a  number  (Book  ii.  chap.  viL  sec.  7) — ^it  is  the  multitude 


REAL  THAT  OF  WHICH  NOTHIXQ  CAN  BE  SAID.      71 

of  single  feelings, 'each  perishing  the  moment  it  begins' 
(Book  II.  chap,  xxvii.  sec.  2),  from  which  all  the  definiteness 
that  comes  of  composition  and  relation  must  be  supposed  ab- 
seDt.  Thus,  in  trying  to  get  at  what  shall  be  the  mere  fact  in 
detachment  from  mental  accretions,  Locke  comes  to  what  is 
still  consciousness,  but  the  merely  indefinite  in  consciousness. 
He  seeks  the  real  and  finds  the  void.  Of  the  re  al  as  outside  con- 
sciousness nothing  can  be  said ;  and  of  that  again  within  con- 
sciousness, which  is  supposed  to  represent  it,  nothing  can  be 
said. 

87.  We  have  already  seen  how  Locke,  in  his  doctrine  of  Grouna  t.f 
secondary  qualities  of  substances,  practically  gets  over  this  ^f^"^^"" 
difficulty ;   how  he  first  projects  out  of  the  simple  ideas,  actual 
under  relations  which  it  requires  a  mind  to  constitute,  a  ■^'^'^j^^^ 
cognisable  system  of  things,  and  then  gives  content  and  inthemind 
definiteness  to  the  simple  ideas  in  ns  by  treating  them  as  J!  J**®^^ * 
manifestations  of  this  system  of  things.     In  the  doctrine  of  the  mind. 
propositions,  the  proper  correlative  to  the  reduction  of  the 
real  to  the  present  simple  idea,  as  that  of  which  we  cannot 
get  rid,  would  be  the  reduction  of  the  *  real  proposition '  to 
the  mere  ^  it  is  now  felt.'     If  the  matter-of-fact  is  to  be  that 
in  consciousness  which  is  independent  of  the  ^  work  of  the 
mind '  in  comparing  and  compounding,  this  is  the  only  pos- 
sible expression  for  it.     It  states  the  only  possible   ^real 
essence,'  which  yet  is  an  essence  of  nothing,  for  any  refer- 
ence of  it  to  a  thing,  if  the  thing  is  outside  consciousness, 
is  an  impossibility ;  and  if  it  is  within  consciousness,  implies 
an  ^  invention  of  the  mind  '  both  in  the  creation  of  a  thing, 
*  always  the  same  with  itself,'  out  of  perishing  feelings,  and 
in  the  reference  of  the  feelings  to  such  a  thing.    Thus  carried 
out,  the  antithesis  between   ^fact'   and  'creation  of  the 
mind'  becomes  self-destructive,  for,  one  feeling  being  as 
real  as  another,  it  leaves  no  room  for  that  distinction  between 
the  real  and  fantastic,  to  the  uncritical  sense  of  which  it  owes 
its  birth.      To  avoid  this  fusion  of  dream-land  and  the 
waking  world,  Locke  avails  himself  of  the  distinction  between 
the  idea  (Le.  feeling)  as  in  the  mind,  which  is  not  convertible 
with  reality,  and  the  idea  as  somewhere  else,  no  one  can  say 
where — *  the  actual  sensation ' — ^which  is  so  convertible.   The 
distinction,  however,  must  either  consist  in  degrees  of  liveli* 
ness,  in  which  case  there  must  be  a  corresponding  infinity  of 
degrees  of  reality  or  unreality,  or  else  must  presuppose  a 


72 


GENEPwAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Two 

meaningB 
of  real 
«Menee» 


Aoeordin^ 
to  one,  it  ib 
a  collec- 
tion of 
ideas  M 
qualities  of 
A  thing: 


real  existence  from  which  the  feeling,  if  '  actual  Rensation/ 
i» — ^if  merely  *  in  the  mind  '  is  no^— derived.  Such  a  real 
existence  either  is  an  object  of  consciousness,  or  is  not.  If 
it  is  not,  no  distinction  between  one  kind  of  feeling  and 
another  can  for  consciousness  be  derived  from  it.  If  it  is, 
then,  granted  the  distinction  between  given  feelings  and 
creations  of  the  mind,  it  must  fall  to  the  latter,  and  a  ^  thing 
of  the  mind '  turns  out  to  be  the  ground  upon  which  '  fact ' 
is  opposed  to  *  things  of  the  mind.' 

88.  It  remains  to  exhibit  briefly  the  disguises  under  which 
these  inherent  difficulties  of  his  theory  of  essence  appear  in 
Locke.  Throughout,  instead  of  treating  *  essence '  altogether 
as  a  fiction  of  the  mind — as  it  must  be  if  feelings  in  sim- 
plicity and  singleness  are  alone  the  real — ^he  treats  indeed  as 
a  merely  '  nominal  essence '  every  possible  combination  of 
ideas  of  which  we  can  speak,  but  still  supposes  another 
essence  which  is  'real'  But  a  real  essence  of  what? 
Clearly,  according  to  his  statements,  of  the  same  ^  thing '  of 
which  the  combination  of  ideas  in  the  mind  is  the  nominal 
essence.  Indeed,  there  is  no  meaning  in  the  antithesis  un- 
less the  *  something,'  of  which  the  latter  essence  is  so 
nominally,  is  that  of  which  it  is  not  so  really.  So  says  Locke, 
*  the  nominal  essence  of  gold  is  that  complex  idea  the  word 
gold  stands  for ;  let  it  be,  for  instance,  a  body  yellow,  of  a 
certain  weight,  malleable,  fusible,  and  fixed.  But  the  real 
essence  is  the  constitution  of  the  insensible  parts  of  thai 
body,  on  which  those  qualities  and  all  the  other  properties  of 
gold  depend.'  (Book  in.  chap.  vi.  sec.  2.)  Here  the  notion 
clearly  is  that  of  one  and  the  same  thing,  of  which  we  can 
only  say  that  it  is  a  ^  body,*  a  certain  complex  of  ideas — 
yellowness,  fusibility,  &c. — is  the  nominal,  a  certain  consti- 
tution of  insensible  parts  the  real,  essence.  It  is  on  the  real 
essence,  moreover,  that  the  ideas  which  constitute  the 
nominal  depend.  Yet  while  they  are  known,  the  real  essence 
(as  appears  from  the  context)  is  wholly  unknown.  In  this 
case,  it  would  seem,  the  cause  is  not  known  from  its  effects. 

89.  There  are  lurking  here  two  opposite  views  of  the  rela- 
tion between  the  nominal  essence  and  the  real  thing. 
According  to  one  view,  which  prevails  in  the  later  chapters 
of  the  Second  Book  and  in  certain  passages  of  the  third,  the 
relation  between  them  is  that  with  which  we  have  already 
become  fEimiliar  in  the  doctrine  of  substance — that,  namely. 


T^HAT  IS  REAL  ESSENCE  ?  73 

between  ideas  as  in  ns  and  the  same  as  in  the  thing.  (Book  ii. 
chap,  xxiii,  sees.  9  and  10.)  No  distinction  is  made  between 
the  ^idea  in  the  mind'  and  the  ^actual  sensation.'  The 
ideas  in  the  mind  are  also  in  the  thing,  and  thus  are  called 
its  qualities,  though  for  the  most  part  thej  are  so  onlj 
necondarily,  i.e.  as  effects  of  other  qualities,  which,  as  copied 
directly  in  our  ideas,  are  called  primary,  and  relatively  to 
these  effects  are  called  powers.  These  powers  have  yet  in- 
numerable effects  to  produce  in  us  which  they  have  not  yet 
produced.  (Book  n.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  10.)  Those  which 
have  been  so  &r  produced,  being  gathered  up  in  a  complex 
idea  to  which  a  name  is  annexed,  form  the  *  nominal  essence ' 
of  the  thing.  Some  of  them  are  of  primary  qualities,  more 
are  of  secondaiy.  The  originals  of  the  former,  the  powers  to 
produce  the  latter,  together  with  powers  to  produce  an  in- 
definite multitude  more,  will  constitute  the  ^  real  essence,* 
which  is  thus  ^  a  standard  made  by  nature,'  to  which  the 
nominal  essence  is  opposed  merely  as  the  inadequate  to  the 
adequate.  The  ideas,  that  is  to  say,  which  are  indicated  by 
the  name  of  a  thing,  have  been  really  *  found  in  it '  or  *  pro- 
duced by  it,'  but  are  only  a  part  of  those  that  remain  to  be 
found  in  it  or  produced  by  it.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  Locke 
opposes  the  adequacy  between  nominal  and  real  essence  in 
the  case  of  mixed  modes  to  their  perpetual  inadequacy  in 
the  case  of  ideas  of  substances.  The  combination  in  the 
one  case  is  artificially  made,  in  the  other  is  found  and  being 
perpetually  enlarged.  This  he  illustrates  by  imagining  the 
processes  which  led  Adam  severally  to  the  idea  of  the  mixed 
mode  ^jealousy'  and  that  of  the  substance  ^  gold.'  In  the 
former  process  Adam  *  put  ideas  together  only  by  his  own 
imagination,  not   taken    from  the   existence  of  anything 

the  standard  there  was  of  his  own  making.'    In 

the  latter, '  he  has  a  standard  made  by  nature ;  and  there- 
fore being  to  represent  that  to  himself  by  the  idea  he  has  of 
it,  even  when  it  is  absent,  he  puts  no  simple  idea  into  his 
complex  one,  but  what  he  has  the  perception  of  from  the 
thing  itself.  He  takes  care  that  his  idea  be  conformable  to 
this  archetype.'  (Book  in.  chap.  vi.  sees.  46,  47.)  '  It  is 
plain,'  however,  ^  that  the  idea  made  after  this  fashion  by 
this  archetype  will  be  always  inadequate.' 

90.  The  nominal  essence  of  a  thing,  then,  according  to  about  nd 
this  view,  being  no  other  than  the  *  complex  idea  of  a  sub-  ^^^  ^^ 


74  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

there  may  stance,*  is  a  copy  of  reality,  just  as  the  simple  idea  is.  It  is 
kn^r^  *  a  picture  or  representation  in  the  mind  of  a  thing  that  does 
exist  by  ideas  of  those  qualities  that  are  discoverable  in  it/ 
(Book  II.  chap.  xxxi.  sees.  6,  8.)  It  only  differs  from  the 
simple  idea  (which  is  itself,  as  abstract,  a  nominal  essence)^  in 
respect  of  reality,  because  the  latter  is  a  copy  or  effect  pro- 
duced singly  and  involuntarily,  whereas  we  may  put  ideas 
together,  as  if  in  a  thing,  which  have  never  been  so  presented 
together,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  never  can  put  together  all 
that  exist  together.  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxx.  sec.  5,  and  xxxi.  10.) 
So  far  as  Locke  maintains  this  view,  the  difficulty  about 
general  propositions  concerning  real  existence  need  not  arise. 
A  statement  which  affirmed  of  gold  one  of  the  qualities  included 
in  the  complex  idea  of  that  substance,  would  not  express 
merely  an  analysis  of  an  idea  in  the  mind,  but  would  repre- 
sent a  relation  of  qualities  in  the  existing  thing  from  which 
the  idea  ^  has  been  taken.'  These  qualities,  as  in  the  thing, 
doubtless  would  not  be,  as  in  us,  feelings  (or,  as  Locke  should 
rather  have  said  in  more  recent  phraseology,  possibilities  of 
feeling),  but  powers  to  produce  feeling,  nor  could  any  rela- 
tion between  these,  as  in  the  thing,  be  affirmed  but  such  as 
had  produced  its  copy  or  effect  in  actual  experience.  No 
coexistence  of  qualities  could  be  truly  affirmed,  vvhich  had 
not  been  found;  but,  once  found — being  a  coexistence  of 
qualities  and  not  simply  a  momentary  coincidence  of  feel- 
ings— it  could  be  affirmed  as  permanent  in  a  general  pro- 
position. That  a  relation  can  be  stated  universally  between 
ideas  collected  in  the  mind,  no  one  denies,  and  if  such 
collection  'is  taken  from  a  combination  of  simple  ideas 
existing  together  constantly  in  things '  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxxii. 
sec.  18),  the  statement  will  hold  equally  of  such  existence. 
Thus  Locke  contrasts  mixed  modes,  which,  for  the  most 
pari,  '  being  actions  which  perish  in  the  birth,  are  not 
capable  of  a  lasting  duration,'  with  '  substances,  which  are 
the  actors;  and  wherein  the  simple  ideas  that  make  up 
the  complex  ideas  designed  by  the  name  have  a  lasting 
union.'     (Book  lu.  chap.  vi.  sec.  42.) 

91.  In  such  a  doctrine  Locke,  starting  whence  he  did, 
could  not  remain  at  rest.  We  need  not  here  repeat  what  has 
been  said  of  it  above  in  the  consideration  of  his  doctrine  of 
substance.    Taken  strictly,  it  implies  that  '  real  existence ' 

■  Book  II.  chap.  zxzi.  sec.  12. 


TWO  MEANINGS  OF  REAL  ESSENCE.  76 

oonsistfl  in  a  permanent  relation  of  ideas,  said  to  be  of  5]jj"*** 
secondary  qnalities,  to  each  other  in  dependence  on  other  egg^^^  ^ 
ideas,  said  to  be  of  primary  qualities.  In  other  words,  in  order  creature  of 
to  constitnte  reality,  it  takes  ideas  out  of  that  particularity  ^^"^^^ 
in  time  and  place,  which  is  yet  pronounced  the  condition  of 
reality,  to  give  them  an  *  abstract  generality*  which  is 
fictitious,  and  then  treats  them  as  constituents  of  a  system 
of  which  the  *  invented  *  relations  of  cause  and  effect  and  of 
identity  are  the  framework.  In  short,  it  brings  reality 
wholly  within  the  region  of  thought,  distinguishing  it  from 
the  system  of  complex  ideas  or  nominal  essences  which  con- 
stitute our  knowledge,  not  as  the  unknown  opposite  of  all 
possible  thought,  but  only  as  the  complete  fix>m  the  incom- 
plete. To  one  who  logically  carried  out  this  view,  the 
ground  of  distinction  between  fact  and  fancy  would  have  to 
be  found  in  the  relation  between  thought  as  *  objective,'  or 
in  the  world,  and  thought  as  so  far  communicated  to  us. 
Here,  however,  it  could  scarcely  be  found  by  Locke,  with 
whom  *  thought '  meant  simply  a  faculty  of  the  *  thinking 
thing,'  called  a  '  soul,'  which  might  ride  in  a  coach  with 
him  fix>m  Oxford  to  London.  (Book  n.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  20.) 
Was  the  distinction  then  to  disappear  altogether  9 

92.  It  is  saved,  though  at  the  cost  of  abandoning  the  ^  new  Hence 
way  of  ideas,'  as  it  had  been  followed  in  the  Second  Book,  another 
by  the  transfer  of  real  existence  from  the  thing  in  which  j^i 
ideas  are  found,  and  whose  qualities  the  complex  of  ideas  esBence  ua 
ID  us,  though  inadequate,   represents,  to  something  called  q^aiitie^of 
'  body,'  necessarily  unknown,  because  no  ideeis  in  us  are  in  unknown 
any  way  representative  of  it.     To  such  an  unknown  body       ^' 
unknown  qualities  are  supposed  to  belong  under  the  designa- 
tion *  real  essence.'     The  subject  of  the  nominal  essence,  just 
because  its  qualities,  being  matter  of  knowledge,  are  ideas 

in  our  minds,  is  a  wholly  different  and  a  fictitious  thing. 

93.  This  change  of  ground  is  of  course  not  recognized  by  How  Locke 
Locke  himself.     It  is  the  perpetual  crossing  of  the  incon-  mixes  up 
sistent  doctrines  that  renders  his  *  immortal  Third  Book '  a  meanings 
web  of  contradictions.     As  was  said  above,  he  constantly  inambig- 
speaks  as  if  the  subject  of  the  real  essence  were  the  same  jj^y*^°^' 
with  that  of  the  nominal,  and  never  explicitly  allows  it  to 

be  different.  The  equivocation  under  which  the  difference 
is  disguised  lies  in  the  use  of  the  term  *  body.'  A  *  particular 
body '  is  the  subject  both  of  the  nominal  and  real  essence 


76  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

*  gold '  But  *  body/  as  that  in  which  *  ideas  are  found,'  and 
in  which  they  permanently  coexist  according  to  a  natural 
law,  is  one  thing ;  *  body/  as  the  abstraction  of  the  unknown, 
is  quite  another.  It  is  body  in  the  former  sense  that  is  the 
real  thing  when  nominal  essence  (the  complex  of  ideas  in  us) 
is  treated  as  representative,  though  inadequately  so,  of  the 
real  thing ;  it  is  body  in  the  latter  sense  that  is  the  real 
thing  when  this  is  treated  as  wholly  outside  possible  con- 
sciousness, and  its  essence  as  wholly  unrepresented  by 
possible  ideas.  By  a  jumble  of  the  two  meanings  Locke 
obtains  an  amphibious  entity  which  is  at  once  independent 
of  relation  to  ideas,  as  is  body  in  the  latter  sense,  and  a 
source  of  ideas  representative  of  it,  as  is  body  in  the  former 
sense — which  thus  carries  with  it  that  opposition  to  the 
mental  which  is  supposed  necessary  to  the  real,  while  yet  it 
seems  to  manifest  itself  in  ideas.  Meanwhile  a  third  con- 
ception of  the  real  keeps  thrusting  itself  upon  the  other  two 
— the  view,  namely,  that  body  in  both  senses  is  a  fiction  of 
thought,  and  that  the  mere  present  feeling  is  alone  the  real. 
Bodyaa  94.  Where  Locke  is  insisting  on  the  opposition  between 

iMttOT'^'  the  real  essence  and  any  essence  that  can  be  known,  the 
without  former  is  generally  ascribed  either  to  a  *  particular  being '  or 
^'^^^^  to  a  '  parcel  of  matter.'  The  passage  which  brings  the  oppo- 
sition into  the  strongest  relief  is  perhaps  the  following : — *  I 
would  ask  any  one,  what  is  sufficient  to  make  an  essential 
difference  in  nature  between  any  two  particular  beings, 
without  any  regard  had  to  some  abstract  idea,  which  is 
looked  upon  as  the  essence  and  standard  of  a  species  9  All 
such  patterns  and  standards  being  quite  laid  aside,  particular 
beings,  considered  barely  in  themselves,  will  be  found  to 
have  all  their  qualities  equally  essential ;  and  everything,  in 
each  individual,  will  be  essential  to  it,  or,  which  is  more, 
nothing  at  all.  For  though  it  may  be  reasonable  to  ask 
whether  obeying  the  magnet  be  essential  to  iron;  yet  I 
think  it  is  very  improper  and  insignificant  to  ask  whether  it 
be  essential  to  the  particular  parcel  of  matter  I  cut  my  pen 
with,  without  considering  it  under  the  name  irony  or  as 
being  of  a  certain  species.'  (Book  ui.  chap.  vi.  sec.  5.)' 
Here,  it  will  be  seen,  the  exclusion  of  the  abstract  idea  fix)m 
reality  carries  with  it  the  exclusion  of  that  *  standard  made 

*  To  the  same  purpose  is  «  passage  in  Book  m.  chap.  z.  see.  19»  towaids  thm 
•nd.  ^ 


IS  IT  A  COMPLEX  OF  KNOWABLE  QUALTTIES?       77 

bj  nature/  which  according  to  the  passages  abeady  quoted, 
Is  the  ^  thing  itself  from  which  the  abstract  idea  is  taken,  and 
from  which,  if  correctly  taken,  it  derives  reality.  This 
exclusion,  again,  means  nothing  else  than  the  disappearance 
from  'nature*  (which  with  Locke  is  interchangeable  with 
•  reality ')  of  all  essential  difference.  There  remain,  however, 
as  the  ^  real,'  *  particular  beings,'  or  '  individuals,'  or  *  parcels 
of  matter.'  In  each  of  these,  '  considered  barely  in  itself, 
everything  will  be  essential  to  it,  or,  which  is  more,  nothing 
at  all.' 

95.  We  have  already  seen,'  that  if  by  a  ^particular  being'  i^  this 
is  meant  the  mere  indivichium,  as  it  would  be  upon  abstrac-  f^^  ^^T 
tion  of  all  relations  which  according  to  Locke  are  fictitious,  j^ai-^™ 
and  constitute  a  community  or  generality,  it  certainly  can  Tiduiim. 
have  no  essential  qualities,  since  it  has  no  qualities  at  all. 
It  is  a  something  which  equals  nothing.  The  notion  of  this 
bare  iridividwu/rn  being  the  real  is  the  '  protoplasm '  of 
Locke's  philosophy,  to  which,  though  he  never  quite  recog- 
nized it  himself,  after  the  removal  of  a  certain  number  of 
accretions  we  may  always  penetrate.  It  is  so  because  his 
unacknowledged  method  of  finding  the  real  consisted  in 
abstracting  from  the  formed  content  of  consciousness  tiU  he 
came  to  that  which  could  not  be  got  rid  of.  This  is  the 
momentarily  present  relation  of  subject  and  object,  which, 
consideTed  on  the  side  of  the  object,  gives  the  mere  atom, 
and  on  the  side  of  the  subject,  the  mere  '  it  is  felt.'  Even  in 
this  ultimate  abstraction  the  *  fiction  of  thought'  still  survives, 
for  the  atom  is  determined  to  its  mere  individuality  by 
relation  to  other  individuals,  and  the  feeling  is  determined 
to  the  present  moment  or  '  the  now '  by  relation  to  other 
*  nows.' 

96.  To  this  ultimate  abstraction,  however,  Locke,  though  sodj  m 
constantly  on  the  road  to  it,  never  quite  penetrates.     He  is  qiwlified 
ftxthest  from  it — indeed,  as  far  from  it  as  possible — where  he  stonwe^of ' 
is  most  acceptable  to  common  sense,  as  in  his  ordinary  time  and 
doctrine  of  abstraction,  where*  the  real,  from   which  the  ^ 
process  of  abstraction  is  supposed  to  begin,  is  already  the 
individual  in  the  fullness  of  its  qualities,  James  and  John, 
this  man  or  this  gold«     He  is  nearest  to  it  when  the  only 
qualification   of  the   ^particular   being,'   which  has  to   be 
removed  by  thought  in  order  to  its  losing  it^  reality  and 

>  See  above,  paragniph  46. 


78 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Sncli  body 
Locke  held 
to  be  sub- 
ject of 
*  primary 
qualities ' : 
but  are 
these  com- 
patible 
with  par- 
ticularity 
in  time  ? 


becoming  an  abstract  idea,  is  supposed  to  consist  in  'circum- 
stances of  time  and  place.' 

97.  It  is  of  these  circumstances,  as  the  constituents  of 
the  real,  that  he  is  thinking  in  the  passage  last  quoted.  Aa 
qualified  by  '  circumstances  of  place '  the  real  is  a  parcel  of 
matter,  and  under  this  designation  Locke  thought  of  it  as  a 
subject  of  *  primary  qualities  of  body.'  *  These,  indeed,  as  he 
enumerates  them,  may  be  shown  to  imply  relations  going  far 
beyond  that  of  simple  distinctness  between  atoms,  and  thus 
to  involve  much  more  of  the  creative  action  of  thought ;  but 
we  need  be  the  less  concerned  for  this  usurpation  on  the  part 
of  the  particular  being,  since  that  which  he  illegitimately 
conveys  to  it  as  derived  from  *  circumstances  of  place,'  he 
virtually  takes  away  from  it  again  by  limitation  in  time. 
The  *  particular  being '  has  indeed  on  the  one  hand  a  real 
essence,  consisting  of  certain  primary  qualities,  but  on  the 
other  it  has  no  continued  identity.  It  is  only  real  as  present 
to  feeling  at  this  or  that  time.  The  particular  being  of  one 
moment  is  not  the  particular  being  of  the  next.  Thus  the 
primary  qualities  which  are  a  real  essence,  i.e.  an  essence  of 
a  particular  being,  at  one  moment,  are  not  its  real  essence  at 
the  next,  because,  while  they  as  represented  in  the  mind 
remain  the  same,  the  *  it,'  the  particular  being  is  difiPerent. 
An  immutable  essence  for  that  very  reason  cannot  be  real. 
The  immutability  can  only  lie  in  a  relation  between  a  certain 
abstract  (i.e.  unreal)  idea  and  a  certain  sound.  (Book  iii. 
chap.  iii.  sec.  19.)  *The  real  constitution  of  things,'  on  the 
other  hand,  *  begin  and  perish  with  them.  All  things  that 
exist  are  liable  to  change.'  {Ihid.)  Locke,  it  is  true  (as  is 
implied  in  the  term  change^)  never  quite  drops  the  notion  of 
there  being  a  real  identity  in  some  unknown  background,  but 
this  makes  no  difference  in  the  bearing  of  his  doctrine  upon 
the  possibility  of  *  real '  knowledge.  It  only  means  that  for 
an  indefinite  particularity  of  *  beings '  there  is  substituted  one 
*  being '  under  an  indefinite  peculiarity  of  forms.  Though  the 
reality  of  the  thing  in  itself  be  immutable,  yet  its  reality /or 

we  may  talk  of  the  •  matter  of  bodies,' 
but  not  of  the  *  body  of  matters.'  But 
since  solidity,  according  to  Locke's 
definition,  involree  the  other  *  primary 
qualities.'  this  distinction  does  not  avail 
him  much. 
*  See  above,  paragraph  69. 


*  According  to  Locke's  ordinary  usage 
of  the  terms,  no  distinction  appears  be- 
twet'n  'matter'  and  'body.'  In  Book 
III.  chap.  X.  sec.  16,  however,  he  dis- 
tiifguishes  matter  irom  body  as  the  less 
determinate  conception  from  the  more. 
The  one  implies  solidity  merely,  the 
other  extension  and  figure  also,  so  that 


OR  UNKNOWN  QUALITIES  OF  UNKNOWN  BODY?      79 

fM  is  in  perpetaal  flux.  *  In  itself'  it  is  a  substance  without 
an  ^sence,  a  *  something  we  know  not  what '  without  any 
ideas  to  '  support ; '  a  '  parcel  of  matter/  indeed,  but  one  in 
which  no  quality  is  really  essential,  because  ifcs  real  essence, 
consisting  in  its  momentary  presentation  to  sense,  changes 
with  the  moments.' 

98,  We  have  previously  noticed*  Locke's  pregnant  remark,  HowLock« 
that  *  things  whose  existence  is  in  succession*  do  not  admit  q^^on/* 
of  identity.  (Book  u.  chap,  xxvii.  sec.  2.)  So  far,  then,  as 
the  '  real,'  in  distinction  from  the  ^  abstract,'  is  constituted 
by  particularity  in  time,  or  has  its  existence  in  succession,  it 
excludes  the  relation  of  identity.  *It  perishes  in  every 
moment  that  it  begins.'  Had  Locke  been  master  of  this 
notion,  instead  of  being  irregularly  mastered  by  it,  he  might 
have  anticipated  all  that  Hume  had  to  say.  As  it  is,  even  in 
passages  such  as  those  to  which  reference  has  just  been 
made,  where  he  follows  it^  lead  the  farthest,  he  is  still  pulled 
up  by  inconsistent  conceptions  with  which  common  sense, 
acting  through  common  language,  restrains  the  most  adven- 
turous philosophy.  Thus,  even  from  his  illustration  of  the 
liability  of  all  existence  to  change — *  that  which  was  grass 
to-day  is  to-morrow  the  flesh  of  a  sheep,  and  within  a  few 
days  after  will  become  part  of  a  man  '• — we  find  that,  just  as 
he  does  not  pursue  the  individualization  of  the  real  in  space 
BO  far  but  that  it  still  remains  '  a  constitution  of  parts,'  so  he 
does  not  pursue  it  in  time  so  far  but  that  a  coexistence  of  real 
elements  over  a  certain  duration  is  possible.  To  a  more 
thorough  analysis,  indeed,  there  is  no  alternative  between 
finding  reality  in  relations  of  thought,  which,  because  rela- 
tions of  thought,  are  not  in  time  and  therefore  are  immutable, 
and  submitting  it  to  such  subdivision  of  time  as  excludes  all 
real  coexistence  because  what  is  real,  as  present,  at  one 
moment  is  unreal,  as  past,  at  the  next.  This  alternative 
could  not  present  itself  in  its  clearness  to  Locke,  because, 
according  to  his  method  of  interrogating  consciousness,  he 
inevitably  found  in  its  supposed  beginning,  which  he  identified 
with  the  real,  those  products  of  thought  which  he  opposed  to 
the  real,  and  thus  read  into  the  simple  feeling  of  the  moment 
that  which,  if  it  were  the  simple  feeling  of  the  moment,  it 

>  Cf.  Book  m.  chap.  vi.  sec  4:  *Take  thought  of  anything  essential  to  any  of 

hot  awsj  the  abstract  ideas  by  which  them  instantly  yanishes/  &c. 
ve  sort  indiridoals  and    rank  them  *  See  above,  paragraph  76. 

under  oommon  names,  and  then  the         *  Book  in.  chap.  iii.  sec.  10. 


eonsciouB- 
noM. 


80  GENERAL  INTRODUCTIOX. 

could  not  contain.  Thus  throughout  the  Second  Book  of  the 
Essay  the  simple  idea  is  supposed  to  represent  either  as  copy 
or  as  effect  a  permanent  reality,  whether  body  or  mind :  and 
in  the  later  books,  even  where  the  represer^tation  of  such 
reality  in  knowledge  comes  in  question,  its  existence  as  con- 
stituted by  *  primary  qualities  of  body'  is  throughout  assumed, 
though  general  propositions  with  regard  to  it  are  declared 
impossible.  It  is  a  feeling  referred  to  body,  or,  in  the 
language  of  subsequent  psychology,  a  feeling  of  the  outward 
sonse,^  that  Locke  means  by  an  '  actual  present  sensation,' 
and  it  is  properly  in  virtue  of  this  reference  that  such  sensa- 
tion is  supposed  to  be,  or  to  report,  the  real. 
Body  and  99-  According  to  the  doctrine  of  primary  qualities,  as  ori- 
itg  quuU-  ginally  stated,  the  antithesis  lies  between  body  as  it  is  in 
posed^^be  i^clf  and  body  as  it  is  for  us,  not  between  body  as  it  is  for 
outside  us  in  *  actual  sensation,'  and  body  as  it  is  for  us  according  to 
*  ideas  in  the  mind.'  The  primary  qualities  *are  in  bodies 
whether  we  perceive  them  or  no.'  (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec. 
23.)  As  he  puts  it  elsewhere  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  2),  it 
is  just  because  ^  solidity  and  extension  and  the  termination 
of  it,  figure,  with  motion  and  rest,  whereof  we  have  the  ideas, 
would  be  really  in  the  world  as  they  are  whether  there  were 
any  sensible  being  to  perceive  them  or  no,'  that  they  are  to 
be  looked  on  as  the  real  modifications  of  matter.  A  change 
in  them,  unlike  one  in  the  secondary  qualities,  or  such  as  is 
relative  to  sense,  is  a  real  alteration  in  body.  *  Pound  an 
almond,  and  the  clear  white  colour  will  be  altered  into  a  dirty 
one,  and  the  sweet  taste  into  an  oily  one.  What  alteration 
can  the  beating  of  the  pestle  make  in  any  body,  but  an  altera- 
tion of  the  texture  of  itP '  (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec.  20.)  It 
is  implied  then  in  the  notion  of  the  real  as  body  that  it  should 
be  outside  consciousness.  It  is  that  which  seems  to  remain 
when  everything  belonging  to  consciousness  has  been  thought 

'  For  the  germs  of  the  distinction  be-  and  warmth,  which  he  supposes  chil« 

tween  outer  and  inner  sense,  see  Locke's  dren  to  receive  in  the  womb   from  the 

Essay,  Book  n.  chap.  i.  sec.  14:  'This  'innate  principles  which  some  contend 

source  of  ideas  (the  perception  of  the  for.'    '  These  (the  ideas  of  hunger  and 

operations  of  the  mind)  eveiy  man  has  waimth)  being  the  effects  of  sensation, 

wholly  in  himself;  and  though  it  be  not  are  only  from  some  affections  of  the 

sense,  as  having  nothing  to  do  with  bodv  which  happen  to  them  there,  and 

external  objects,  yet  it  is  very  like  it,  so  depend  on  something  exterior  to  the 

and  might  properly  enough  be  called  mind,  not  otherwise  differing  in  their 

internal  sense.'   For  the  notion  of  outer  manner  of  production  from  other  ideas 

sense  Cf.  Book  n.  chap.  ix.  sec.  6,  where  derived  from  sense,  but  only  in  the  pre- 

he  is  distinguishing  the  ideas  of  hunger  cedency  of  time.' 


FRQCABT  QUALITIES  AND  CONSCIOUSNESa  81 

awaj*  Yet  it  is  brought  within  consciousness  again  by  the 
supposition  that  it  has  qualities  which  copy  themselves  in 
oar  ideas  and  are  *•  the  exciting  causes  of  all  our  various 
sensations  from  bodies.'  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  3.)  Again, 
however,  the  antithesis  between  the  real  and  consciousness 
prevailB,  and  the  qualities  of  matter  or  body  having  been 
brought  within  the  latter,  are  opposed  to  a  ^substance  of 
body ' — otherwise  spoken  of  as  *  the  nature,  cause,  or  manner 
of  producing  the  ideas  of  primary  qualities ' — which  remains 
outside  it,  unknown  and  unknowable.  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxiii. 
sec.  30,  Ac.) 

100.  The  doctrine  of  primary  qualities  was  naturally  the  How  can 
one  upon  which  the  criticism  of  Berkeley  and  Hume  first  primMy 
fastened,  as  the  most  obvious  aberration  from  the  *  new  way  be  oui^BTdf 
of  ideas.'     That  the  very  notion  of  the  senses  as  *  reporting  *  coneciouj. 
anything,  under  secondary  no  less  than  under  primary  quali-  yetknoir- 
ties,  implies  the  presence   of  ^fictions  of  thought'  in  the  able? 
primitive  consciousness,  may  become  clear  upon  analysis; 

but  it  lies  on  the  surface  and  is  avowed  by  Locke  himself 
(Book  II.  chap.  viii.  sees.  2,  7),  that  the  conception  of  primary 
qualities  is  only  possible  upon  distinction  being  made  between 
ideas  as  in  our  minds,  and  the  ^  nature  of  things  existing 
without  us,'  which  cannot  be  given  in  the  simple  feeling 
itself.  This  admitted,  the  distinction  might  either  be  traced 
to  the  presence  within  intelligent  consciousness  of  another 
factor  than  simple  ideas,  or  be  accounted  for  as  a  gradual 
*  invention  of  the  mind.'  In  neither  way,  however,  could 
Locke  regard  it  and  yet  retain  his  distinction  between  fact 
and  fftncy,  as  resting  upon  that  between  the  nature  of  things 
and  the  mind  of  man.  The  way  of  escape  lay  in  a  figure  of 
speech,  the  figure  of  the  wax  or  the  mirror.  *  The  ideas  of 
primary  qualities  are  resemblances  of  them.*  (Book  ii.  chap, 
viii.  sec.  15.)  These  qualities  then  may  be  treated,  according 
to  occasion,  either  as  primitive  data  of  consciousness,  or  as 
the  essence  of  that  which  is  the  unknown  opposite  of  con- 
sciousness— in  the  latter  way  when  the  antithesis  between 
nature  and  mind  is  in  view,  in  the  former  when  nature  has 
yet  to  be  represented  as  knowable. 

101.  How,  asked  Berkeley,  can  an  idea  be  like  anything  Locke 
that  is  not  an  idea?     Put  the  question  in  its  proper  strength  ^^^ 
—How  can  an  idea  be  like  that  of  which  the  sole  and  simple  copjtheLi 
determination  is  just  that  it  is  not  an  idea  (and  such  with  ^e^^M »» 

VOL.   I.  G 


82  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

ideas—  ^  Locke  is  body  *in  itself  or  as  the  real) — and  it  is  clearly 
fejo^ndif  unanswerable.  The  process  by  which  Locke  was  prevented 
Locke  gets  from  putting  it  to  himself  is  not  difficult  to  trace.  *  Body  * 
d?fficulty^  and  *the  solid'  are  with  him  virtually  convertible  terms, 
by  his  Each  indiflFerently  holds  the  place  of  the  substance^  of  which 
^*H^t^**^^  the  primary  qualities  are  so  many  determinations.^  It  is 
true  that  where  solidity  has  to  be  defined,  it  is  defined  as  an 
attribute  of  body,  but  conversely  body  itself  is  treated  as  a 

*  texture  of  solid  parts,'  i.e.  as  a  mode  of  the  solid.  Body,  in 
short,  so  soon  as  thought  of,  resolves  itself  into  a  relation  of 
bodies,  and  the  solid  into  a  relation  of  solids,  but  Locke,  by 
a  shuffle  of  the  two  terms — representing  body  as  a  relation 
between  solids  and  the  solid  as  a  relation  between  bodies — 
gains  the  appearance  of  explaining  each  in  turn  by  relation 
to  a  simpler  idea.  Body,  as  the  unknown,  is  revealed  to  us 
by  the  idea  of  solidity,  which  sense  conveys  to  us;  while 
solidity  is  explained  by  reference  to  the  idea  of  body.  The 
idea  of  solidity,  we  are  told,  is  a  simple  idea  which  comes  into 
the  mind  solely  by  the  sense  of  touch.  (Book  n.  chap.  iii. 
sec.  1.)  But  no  sooner  has  he  thus  identified  it  with  an  im- 
mediate feeHng  than,  in  disregard  of  his  own  doctrine,  that 

*  an  idea  which  has  no  composition '  is  undefinable,"  he  con- 
verts it  into  a  theory  of  the  cause  of  that  feeling.  ^  It  arises 
from  the  resistance  which  we  find  in  body  to  the  entrance  of 
any  other  body  into  the  place  it  possesses  till  it  has  left  it ; ' 
and  he  at  once  proceeds  to  treat  it  as  the  consciousness  of 
such  resistance.  *  Whether  we  move  or  rest,  in  what  posture 
soever  we  are,  we  always  feel  something  under  us  that  sup- 
ports us,  and  hinders  our  farther  sinking  downwards :  and 
the  bodies  which  we  daily  handle  make  us  perceive  that 
whilst  they  remain  between  them,  they  do  by  an  insurmount- 
able force  hinder  the  approach  of  the  parts  of  our  hands  that 
press  them.  That  which  then  hinders  the  approach  of  two 
bodies,  when  they  are  moviug  one  towards  another,  I  call 
solidity.'     (Book  ii.  chap.  iv.  sec  1.) 

in  which  102.  Now  *  body '  in  this  theory  is  by  no  means  outside 

^^tes  b^I-**'    consciousness.     It  is  emphatically  *in  the  mind,'  a  *  nominal 
hreenbody  essence,'  determined  by  the  relation  which  the  tiieory  assigns 

>  See  Book  n.  chap.  viii.  sec.  23 :  The  is  so  inseparable  an  idea  from  body,  that 

primary  *  qualities  that  are  in  bodies,  upon  that  depends  its  filling  of  space, 

are  the  bulk,  figure,  number,  situation,  its  contact,  impulse,  and  communica- 

and  motion  or  rest,  oj  Chdr  solid  parts*  tion  of  motion  upon  impulse.* 

Cf.  Book  II.  chap.  xiii.  sec.  11 :  'Solidity  ■  See  Book  in.  chap.  iv.  sec.  7. 


IDEA  OF  SOLIDITY.  83 

to  it,  and  which,  like  every  relation  according  to  Locke,  is  a  m  un- 
*  thing  of  the  mind/  This  relation  is  that  of  outwardness  to  op^Bite  of 
other  bodies,  and  among  these  to  the  sensitive  body  through  mind  and 
which  we  receive  *  ideas  of  sensation ' — a  body  which,  on  its  l^J^i^j^* 
side,  as  determined  by  the  relation,  has  its  essence  from  the  essence 
mind.  It  is,  then,  not  as  the  unknown  opposite  of  the  mind, 
but  as  determined  by  an  intelligible  relation  which  the  mind 
constitutes,  and  of  which  the  members  are  each  *  nominal 
essences,'  that  body  is  outward  to  the  sensitive  subject.  But 
to  Locke,  substituting  for  body  as  a  nominal  essence  body  as 
the  unknown  thing  in  itself,  and  identifying  the  sensitive  sub- 
ject with  the  mind,  outwardness  in  the  above  sense-^an  out- 
wardness constituted  by  the  mind —becomes  outwardness  to 
the  mind  of  an  unknown  opposite  of  the  mind.  Solidity, 
then,  and  the  properties  which  its  definition  involves  (and  it 
involves  all  the  'primary  qualities'),  become  something 
wholly  alien  to  the  mind,  which  *  would  exist  without  any 
sensible  being  to  perceive  them.'  As  such,  they  do  duty  as 
a  real  essence,  when  the  opposition  of  this  to  everything  in 
the  mind  has  to  be  asserted.  Tet  must  they  be  in  some  sort 
ideas,  for  of  these  alone  (as  Locke  folly  admits)  can  we  think 
and  speak;  and  if  ideas,  in  the  mind.  How  is  this  contra- 
diction to  be  overcome  9  By  the  notion  that  though  not  in 
or  of  the  mind,  they  yet  copy  themselves  upon  it  in  virtue  of 
an  impulse  in  body,  correlative  to  that  resistance  of  which 
touch  conveys  the  idea.  (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec.  11).*  This 
explanation,  however,  is  derived  from  the  equivocation  be- 
tween the  two  meanings  of  mind  and  body  respectively.  The 
problem  to  be  explained  is  the  relation  between  the  mind 
and  that  which  is  only  qualified  as  the  negation  of  mind ; 
and  the  explanation  is  found  in  a  relation,  only  existing  for 
the  mind,  between  a  sensitive  and  a  non-sensitive  body. 

103.  The  case  then  stands  as  follows.    All  that  Locke  says  Hationaie 
of  body  as  the  real  thing-in-itself,  and  of  its  qualities  as  the  ^^^^. 
essence  of  such  thing,  comes  according  to  his  own  showing  ti^ 
of  an  action  of  the  mind  which  he  reckons  the  source  of 
fictions.     *  Body  in  itself'  is  a  substratum  of  ideas  which  the 
mind  '  accustoms  itself  to  suppose,'    It  perpetually  recedes, 
as  what  was  at  first  a  substance  becomes  in  turn  a  complex 
of  qualities  for  which  a  more  remote  substratum  has  to  be 

*  Of.  also  the  passage  from  Book  ii.  chap.  ziii.  sec.  11,  quoted  aboTS^  p.  82, 
note  1. 

o  2 


84  GEl^EltAl.  INTRODUCTION. 

Bupposed— a  *  substance  of  body,'  a  productive  cause  of 
matter.  But  the  substance,  however  remote,  is  determined 
by  the  qualities  to  which  it  is  correlative,  as  the  cause  by  its 
effects  ;  and  every  one  of  these — ^whether  the  most  primary, 
solidity,  or  those  which  ^  the  mind  finds  inseparable  from 
every  particle  of  matter,'  i.e.  from  tlie  *  solid  parts  of  a  body,'* 
— as  defined  by  Locke,  is  a  relation  such  as  the  mind,  '  bring- 
ing one  thing  to  and  setting  it  by  another '  (Book  ii.  chap. 
XXV.  sec.  1),  can  alone  constitute.  To  Locke,  however,  over-- 
come  by  the  necessity  of  intelligence,  as  gradually  developing 
itself  in  each  of  us,  to  regard  the  intelligible  world  as  there 
before  it  is  known,  the  real  must  be  something  which  would 
be  what  it  is  if  thought  were  not.  Strictly  taken,  this  must 
mean  that  it  is  that  of  which  nothing  can  be  said,  and  some 
expression  must  be  found  by  means  of  which  it  may  do  double 
duty  as  at  once  apart  from  consciousness  and  in  it.  This  is 
done  by  converting  the  primary  qualities  of  body,  though 
obviously  complex  ideas  of  relation,  into  simple  feelings  of 
touch,*  and  supposing  the  subject  of  this  sensation  to  be 
related  to  its  object  as  wax  to  the  seal.  K  we  suppose  this 
relation,  again,  which  is  really  within  the  mind  and  consti- 
tuted by  it,  to  be  one  between  the  mind  itself,  as  passive,  and 
the  real,  we  obtain  a  *  real '  which  exists  apart  fi'om  the  mind, 
yet  copies  itself  upon  it.  The  mind,  then,  so  far  as  it  takes 
such  a  copy,  becomes  an  *  outer  sense,'  as  to  which  it  may  be 
conveniently  forgotten  that  it  is  a  mode  of  mind  at  all.  Thus 
every  modification  of  it,  as  an  ^actual  present  sensation,' 
comes  to  be  opposed  to  every  idea  of  memory  or  imagination, 
as  that  which  is  not  of  the  mind  to  that  which  is  ;  though 
there  is  no  assignable  difierence  between  one  and  the  other, 
except  an  indefinite  one  in  degree  of  vivacity,  that  is  not  de- 
rived from  the  action  of  the  mind  in  referring  the  one  to  an  ob- 
ject, constituted  by  itself,  to  which  it  does  not  refer  the  other. 
What  104.  Let  us  now  consider  whether  by  this  reference  to 

knowledge  body,  feeling  becomes  any  the  more  a  source  of  general  know- 
ing, even     ledge  concerning  matters  of  fact.    As  we  have  seen,  if  we 

to  a*  solid'       *  ^'  ^^^  "•  *^^*P-  ^"*  "^-  ®-     '^^®  *  ^  ^'^^  advisedly  *  touch*  only,  not 

body  con-    P^*™*'y  qualities  of  body  are  *  such  as  *  sight    and    touch,*    beitiuifie,    though 

^^_  P        '    sense  constantly  finds  in  eveiy  particle  Locke  (Book  ii.  chap,  v.)  speaks  of  the 

^  of  matter,  which  has  bulk  enough  to  be  ideas  of  extension,  figure,  motion,  and 

perceived,  and  the  mind  finds  insepar-  rest  of  bodies,  as  received  both  by  sight 

able    from    every  particle    of  matter,  and  touch,  these  are  all  involved  in  the 

though  less  than  to  make  itself  singly  previous  definition  of  solidity,  of  which 

be  porcoived  by  our  senses.'  the  idea  is  ascribed  to  touch  only. 


SENSE  OF  TOUCH  SHOWS  THE  ACTION  OF  BODY.     86 

identify  the  real  with  feeling  simply,  its  distinction  from  ^  bare 
vision '  disappears.    This  difficulty  it  is  sought  to  overcome 
by  distinguishing  feeling  as  merely  in  the  mind  from  actually 
present  sensation.     But  on  reflection  we  find  that  sensation 
after  all  is  feeling,  and  that  one  feeling  is  as  much  present  as 
another,  though  present  only  to  become  at  the  next  moment 
past,  and  thus,  if  it  is  the  presence  that  is  the  condition  of 
reality,  unreal.     The  distinction  then  must  lie  in  the  acttuility 
of  the  sensation.     But  does  not  this  actuality  mean  simply 
derivation  from  the  real,  i.e.  derivation  from  the  idea  which 
has  to  be  derived  from  it  ?    If,  in  the  spirit  of  Locke,  we 
answer,  *  No,  it  means  that  the  feeling  belongs  to  the  outer 
sense ' ;  the  rejoinder  will  be  that  this  means  either  that  it 
is  a  feeling  of  touch — ^and  what  should  give  the  feeling  of 
touch  this  singular  privilege  over  other  feelings  of  not  being 
in  the  mind  while  they  are  in  it  ? — or  that  it  is  a  feeling  re- 
ferred to  body,  which  still  implies  the  presupposition  of  the 
real,  onlyunder  the  special  relations  of  resistance  and  im- 
pulse.    The  latter  alternative  is  the  one  which  Locke  virtu- 
ally adopts,  and  in  adopting  it  he  makes  the  actuality,  by 
which  sensation  is  distinguished  from  ^  feelings  in  the  mind,' 
itself  a  creation  of  the  mrod.     But  though  it  is  by  an  intel- 
lectual interpretation  of  the  feeling  of  touch,  not  by  the  feel- 
ing itself,  that  there  is  given  that  idea  of  body,  by  reference 
to  which  actual  sensation  is  distinguished  fi*om  the  mere  idea, 
still  vrith  Locke  the  feeling  of  touch  is  necessary  to  the  in- 
terpretation.    Thus,  supposing  his  notion  to  be  carried  out 
consistently,  the  actual  present  sensation,  as  reporting  the 
real,  must  either  be  a  feeling  of  touch,  or,  if  of  another  sort, 
e.g.,  sight  or  hearing,  must  be  referable  to  an  object  of  touch. 
In  other  words,  the  real  will  exist  for  us  so  long  only  as  it  is 
touched,  and  ideas  in  us  vrill  constitute  a  real  essence  so  long 
only  as  they  may  be  referred  to  an  object  now  touched.     Let 
the  object  cease  to  be  touched,  and  the   ideas  become  a 
nominal  essence  in  the  mind,  the  knowledge  which  they  con- 
stitute ceases  to  be  real,  and  the  proposition  which  expresses 
it  ceases  to  concern  matter  of  fact.    Truth  as  to  matters  of 
&ct  or  bodies,  then,  must  be  confined  to  singular  propositions 
such  as  *  this  is  touched  now,'  *  that  was  touched  then ;'  *what 
is  touched  now  is  bitter,'  *  what  was  then  touched  was  red.*' 

*  ThQB  the  oooriction  that  an  objeet      by  'putting  the  hand  to  it'  (Book  nr. 
Mm  if  not  'bare  fancy/ which  is  gained      chap.  xi.  sec.  17)«  as  it  conreys  the  idea 


86  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Only  the         106.  All  that  is  gained,  then,  by  the  conversion  of  the 
thr^B^^  feeling  of  touch,  pure  and  simple,  into  the  idea  of  a  body 
thing  is,      touched,  is  the  supposition  that  there  is  a  real  existenci^ 
not  what     which  docs  not  come  and  go  with  the  sensations.     As  to  wfuU 
this  existence  is,  as  to  its  real  essence,  we  can  have  no  know- 
ledge but  such  as  is  given  in  a  present  sensation.^    Any  es- 
sence of  it,  otherwise  known,  could  only  be  a  nominal  essence, 
a  relation  of  ideas  in  our  minds :  it  would  lack  the  condition 
in  virtue  of  which  alone  a  datum  of  consciousness  can  claim 
to  be  representative  of  reality,  that  of  being  an  impression 
made  by  a  body  now  operating  upon  us.     (Book  in.  chap.  v. 
sec.  2,  and  Book  iv.  chap.  xi.  sec.  1.)     The  memory  of  such 
impression,  however  faithful,  will  still  only  report  a  past 
reality.      It  will  itself  be  merely  *an  idea  in  the  mind.* 
Neither  it  nor  its  relation  to  any  present  sensation  resolt  from 
the  immediate  impact  of  body,  and  in  consequence  neither 
^  really  exists.^    All  that  can  be  known,  then,  of  the  real,  in 
other  words,  the  whole  real  essence  of  body,  as  it  is  for  us, 
reduces  itself  to  that  which  can  at  any  moment  be  *  revealed ' 
in  a  single  sensation  apart  fi^m  all  relation  to  past  sensations ; 
and  this,  as  we  have  seen,  is  nothing  at  all. 
How  it  is         106.  Thus  that  reduction  of  reality  to  that  of  which  noth- 
real  ^^^      ^^  ^^°  ^  ®^^^>  which  foUows  from  its  identification  with 
essence  of    particularity  in  time,  follows  equally  from  its  identification 
'^rd^*  to^  ^^^  ^®  resistance  of  body,  or  (which  comes  to  the  same) 
^cke,        from  the  notion  of  an  ^  outer  sense '  being  its  organ ;  since  it 
P^rJBhes      ig  only  that  which  now  resists,  not  a  general  possibility  of  re- 
yet  is  im- '  sistance  nor  a  relation  between  the  resistances  of  different 
mutable,     times,  that  can  be  regarded  as  outside  the  mind.     In  Jjocke's 
language,  it  is  only  a  particular  parcel  of  matter  that  can  be 
so  regarded.     Of  such  a  parcel,  as  he  rightly  says,  it  is  absurd 
to  ask  what  is  its  essence,  for  it  can  have  none  at  all.     (See 
above,  paragraph  94.)  As  real,  it  has  no  quality  save  that  of 
being  a  body  or  of  being  now  touched — a  quality,  which  as 
all  things  real  have  it  and  have  none  other,  cannot  be  a 
differentia  of  it.     When  we  consider  that  this  quality  may  be 

of  solidity,  is  properly,  according    to  suppose  their  being,  without  precisely 

Locke's  doctrine,  not  one  among  other  knowing  what  they  are.'    The  appear- 

'  confirmations  of  Uie  testimony  of  the  ance  of  the  qualification  '  precisely,'  aa 

senses,'  but  the  source  of  all  such  testi-  we  shall  see  below,  marks  an  oscillation 

mony,  as  a  testimony  to  the  real,  i.e.  ftom  the  view,  according  to  which  *real 

to  body.    See  above,  paragraph  62.  essence'  is  the  negation  of  the  know- 

'  Cf.  Book  III.  chap.  vi.  sec.  6:  'As  to  able  to  the  view  according  to  which  our 

the  real  essences  of  substances,  wo  only  knowledge  of  it  is  merely  inadequate. 


REAL  ESSENCE  UNCHANGEABLE.  87 

regarded  equally  as  immutable  and  as  changing  from  moment 
to  moment,  we  shall  see  the  ground  of  Locke's  contradiction 
of  himself  in  speaking  of  the  real  thing  sometimes  as  inde- 
structible, sometimes  as  in  continual  dissolution,.  'The  real 
constitutions  of  things  begin  and  perish  with  them.'  (Book 
m.  chap.  iii.  sec.  19.)  That  is,  the  thing  at  one  moment 
makes  an  impact  on  the  sensitive  tablet — in  the  fact  that  it 
dors  so  lie  at  once  its  existence  and  its  essence — but  the  next 
moment  the  impact  is  over,  and  with  it  thing  and  essence,  as 
realy  have  disappeared.  Another  impact,  and  thus  another 
thing,  has  taken  its  place.  But  of  this  the  real  essence  is 
just  the  same  as  that  of  the  previous  thing,  namely,  that  it 
may  be  touched,  or  is  solid,  or  a  body,  or  a  parcel  of  matter ; 
nor  can  this  essence  be  really  lost,  since  than  it  there  is  no  ^ 
otitier  reality,  all  difference  of  essence,  as  Locke  expressly 
says,^  being  constituted  by  abstract  ideas  and  the  work  of  the 
mind.  It  follows  that  real  change  is  impossible.  A  parcel 
of  matter  at  one  time  is  a  parcel  of  matter  at  all  times.  Thus 
we  have  only  to  forget  that  the  relation  of  continuity  between 
the  parcels,  not  being  an  idea  caused  by  impact,  should  pro- 
perly &11  to  the  unreal— though  only  on  the  same  principle 
as  should  that  of  distinctness  between  the  times — and  we  find 
the  real  in  a  continuity  of  matter,  unchangeable  because  it 
has  no  qualities  to  change.  It  may  seem  strange  that  when 
this  notion  of  the  formless  continuity  of  the  real  being  gets 
the  better  of  Locke,  a  man  should  be  the  real  being  which 
he  takes  as  his  instance.  '  Nothing  I  have  is  essential  to  me. 
An  accident  or  disease  may  very  much  alter  my  colour  or 
shape ;  a  fever  or  fall  may  take  away  my  reason  or  memory, 
or  both ;  and  an  apoplexy  leave  neither  sense  nor  understand- 
ing, no,  nor  life.'  (Book  lii.  chap.  vi.  sec.  4.)  But  as  the 
sequel  shows,  the  man  or  the  '  I '  is  here  considered  simply  as 
*a  particular  corporeal  being,'  i.e.  as  the  *  parcel  of  matter' 
which  alone  (according  to  the  doctrine  of  reality  now  in 
view)  can  be  the  real  in  man,  and  upon  which  all  qualities 
are  *  superinductions  of  the  mind.'  ■ 

107.  We  may  now  discern  the  precise  point  where  the  Only  about 

'  Book  ni.  chap.  yi.  sec  4:  '  Take  but  quoted:  *  So  that  if  it  be  asked,  whether 
away  the  abstract  ideas  hy  which  we  it  be  essential  to  me,  or  any  other  par- 
sort  individuals,  and  then  the  thought  dcular  corporeal  being,  to  hare  reason? 
of  anything  essential  to  any  of  them  I  say,  no ;  no  more  dian  it  is  essential 
instantly  yanishes.'  to  this  white  thing  I  write  on  to  have 

'  See  a  few  lines  below  the  passage  woids  in  it/ 


88 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Blatter,  as 
diBtinct 
£rom 
matter 
itself,  that 
Locke  feels 
ADj  diffi- 
culty. 


These,  as 
knoirable, 
must  be 
our  ideas, 
and  there- 
fore not  a 
«real 
•ssenoe.' 


qualm  as  to  clothing  reality  with  such  superinductions  com- 
monly returns  upon  Locke.  The  conversion  of  feeling  into 
body  felt  and  of  the  particular  time  of  the  feeling  into  an 
individuality  of  the  body,  and,  further,  the  fusion  of  the  in- 
dividual bodies,  manifold  as  the  times  of  sensation,  into  one 
continued  body,  he  passes  without  scruple.  So  long  as  these 
are  all  the  traces  of  mental  fiction  which  *  matter,'  or  *  body,' 
or  *  nature  *  bears  upon  it,  he  regards  it  undoubtingly  as  the 
pure  *  privation  '  of  whatever  belongs  to  the  mind.  But  so 
soon  as  cognisable  qualities,  forming  an  essence,  come  to  be 
ascribed  to  body,  the  reflection  arises  that  these  qualities  are 
on  our  side  ideas,  and  that  so  far  as  they  are  permanent  or 
continuous  they  are  not  ideas  of  the  sort  which  can  alone  re- 
present body  as  the  *  real '  opposite  of  mind ;  they  are  not  the 
result  of  momentary  impact ;  they  are  not  *  actually  present 
sensations.'  Suppose  them,  however,  to  have  no  permanence 
— suppose  their  reality  to  be  confined  to  the  fleeting  *  now ' 
— and  they  are  no  quaUties,  no  essence,  at  all.  There  is  then 
for  us  no  real  essence  of  body  or  nature ;  what  we  call  so  is 
a  creation  of  the  mind. 

108.  This  implies  the  degradation  of  the  *  primary  quali- 
ties of  body '  from  the  position  which  they  hold  in  the  Second 
Book  of  the  Essay,  as  the  real,  par  excellence,  to  that  of  a 
nominal  essence.  In  the  Second  Book,  just  as  the  complex 
of  ideas,  received  and  to  be  received  from  a  substance,  is  taken 
for  the  real  thing  without  disturbance  from  the  antithesis 
between  reality  and  *  ideas  in  the  mind,'  so  the  primary  qua- 
lities of  body  are  taken  not  only  as  real,  but  as  the  sources  of 
all  other  reality.  Body,  the  real  thing,  copying  itself  upon 
the  mind  in  an  idea  of  sensation  (that  of  solidity),  carries 
with  it  from  reality  into  the  mind  those  qualities  which  *  the 
mind  finds  inseparable  from  it,'  with  all  their  modes.  ^  A 
piece  of  manna  of  a  sensible  bulk  is  able  to  produce  in  us  the 
idea  of  a  round  or  square  figure,  and,  by  being  removed 
from  one  place  to  another,  the  idea  of  motion.  This  idea  of 
motion  represents  it,  as  it  really  is  in  the  manna,  moving ;  a 
circle  or  square  are  the  same,  whether  in  idea  or  existence, 
in  the  mind  or  in  the  manna ;  and  this  both  motion  and  figure 
are  really  in  the  manna,  whether  we  take  notice  of  them  or 
no.'  (Book  II.  chap.  viii.  sec.  18.)  To  the  unsophisticated 
man,  taking  for  granted  that  the  *  sensible  bulk '  of  the 
manna  is  a  *  real  essence,'  this  statement  will  raise  no  diflEi- 


_-THE  ^ 

[universitt; 

ABE  PRIMARY  QUAIJTiMa  ^j/^^^^QgEJjeE  P        89 

cnlties.  But  when  he  has  leamt  from  Locke  himself  that  the 
^  sensible  bulk,'  so  far  as  we  can  think  and  speak  of  it,  must 
consist  in  the  ideas  which  it  is  said  to  produce,  the  question 
as  to  the  real  existence  of  these  must  arise.  It  turns  out 
that  they  *  really  exist,'  so  far  as  they  represent  the  impact 
of  a  body  copying  itself  in  actually  present  sensation,  and 
that  from  their  reality,  accordingly,  must  be  excluded  all 
qualities  that  accrue  to  the  present  sensation  from  its  rela- 
tion to  the  past.  Can  the  'primary  qualities'  escape  this 
exclusion  ? 

109.  To  obtain  a  direct  and  compendious  answer  to  this  Are  the 
question  from  Locke's  own  mouth  is  not  easy,  owing  to  the  IJ^itS^ 
want  of  adjustment  between  the  several  passages  where  he  then,  a 
treats  of  the  primary  qualities.     They  are  originally  enume-  ^^^p 
rated  as  the  '  bulk,  figure,  number,  situation,  and  motion  or 

rest  of  the  solid  parts  of  bodies  *  (Book  ii.  chap.  viii.  sec.  23), 
and,  as  we  have  seen,  are  treated  as  all  inyolved  in  that  idea 
of  solidity  which  is  given  in  the  sensation  of  touch.  We 
have  no  further  account  of  them  till  we  come  to  the  chap- 
ters on  *  simple  modes  of  space  and  duration'  (Book  n. 
chaps,  xiii.  &c.),  which  are  introdfted  by  the  remark,  that  in 
the  previous  part  of  the  book  simple  ideas  have  been  treated 
*  rather  in  the  way  that  they  come  into  the  mind  than  as 
distinguished  from  others  more  compounded.'  As  the  simple 
idea,  according  to  Locke,  is  that  which  comes  first  into  the 
mind,  the  two  ways  of  treatment  ought  to  coincide;  but 
there  follows  an  explanation  of  the  simple  modes  in  question, 
of  which  to  a  critical  reader  the  plain  result  is  that  the  idea 
of  body,  which,  according  to  the  imaginary  theory  of  *  the 
way  that  it  came  into  the  mind '  is  simple  and  equivalent  to 
the  sensation  of  touch,  turns  out  to  be  a  complex  of  relations 
of  which  the  simplest  is  called  space. 

110.  To  know  what  space  itself  is,  *  we  are  sent  to  our  Aocoiding 
senses '  of  sight  and  touch.    It  is  *  as  needless  to  go  to  prove  J^J^^*" 
that  men  perceive  by  their  sight  a  distance  between  bodies  they  are 
of  difierent  colours,  or  between  the  parts  of  the  same  body,  ^^^°g 
as  that  they  see  colours  themselves ;  nor  is  it  less  obvious  inTentions 
that  they  can   do  so  in  the   dark  by  feeling  and  touch.'  ^^.^* 
(Book  u.  chap.  xiii.  sec.  2.)     Space  being  thus  explained 

by  reference  to  distance,  and  distance  between  bodiesy  it  might 
be  supposed  that  distance  and  body  were  simpler  ideas.  In 
the  next  paragraph,  however,  distance  is  itself  explained  to 


90  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

be  a  mode  of  space.  It  is  *  space  considered  barely  in  length 
between  any  two  beings/  and  is  distinguished  (a)  from 
^  capacity '  or  '  space  considered  in  length,  breadth,  and 
thickness ; '  (6)  from  *  figure,  which  is  nothing  but  the  rela- 
tion which  the  parts  of  the  termination  of  extension,  or  cir- 
cumscribed space,  have  among  themselves ; '  (c)  from  ^  place, 
which  is  the  relation  of  distance  between  anything  and  any 
two  or  more  points  which  are  considered  as  keeping  the 
same  distance  one  with  another,  and  so  as  at  rest.'  It  is  then 
shown  at  large  (Book  n.  chap.  xiii.  sec.  11),  as  against  the 
Cartesians,  that  extension,  which  is  *  space  in  whatsoever 
manner  considered,'  is  a  *  distinct  idea  from  body.'  The 
ground  of  the  distinction  plainly  lies  in  the  greater  com- 
plexity of  the  idea  of  body.  Throughout  the  definition  just 
given  '  space '  is  presupposed  as  the  simpler  idea  of  which 
capacity,  figure,  and  place  are  severally  modifications ;  and 
these  again,  as  'primary  qualities,'  though  with  a  slight 
difference  of  designation,^  are  not  only  all  declared  inseparable 
from  body,  but  are  involved  in  it  under  a  further  modification 
as  '  gualities  of  its  solid  'parts^^  i.e.,  of  parts  so  related  to  each 
other  that  each  will  change  its  place  sooner  than  admit 
another  into  it.  (Book  n.  chap.  iv.  sec.  2,  and  chap.  viii. 
sec.  28.)  Yet,  though  body  is  thus  a  complex  of  relations — 
all,  according  to  Locke's  doctrine  of  relation,  inventions  of 
the  mind — ^and  though  it  mast  be  proportionately  remote 
from  the  simple  idea  which  '  copies  first  into  the  mind,'  yet, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  body,  as  an  object  previously 
given,  that  these  relations  are  said  to  be  found,  and  found 
by  the  senses.  (Book  ii.  chap.  xiii.  sees.  2,  27.)* 
Body  is  HI-  It  wiU  readily  be  seen  that  *  body '  here  is  a  mode  of 

the  com-  the  idea  of  substance,  and,  like  it,*  appears  in  two  incon- 
whichthey  sisteut  positions  as  at  once  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the 
are  found,  process  of  knowledge — as  on  the  one  hand  that  in  which 
ideals  af  e  found  and  from  which  they  are  abstracted,  and  on 
the  otheiv  hand  that  which  results  from  their  complication. 
As  the  attempt  either  to  treat  particular  qualities  as  given 
jand  substance  as  an  abstraction  gradually  made,  or  con- 
versely to  treat  the  '  thing '  as  given,  and  relations  as 
gradually  superinduced,  necessarily  fails  for  the  simple  reason 

*  In    the   enumeration    of  ptrimary  ferred  to,  it  will  be  seen  that '  matter  * 

qualities, '  capacity '  is  represented  by  is  used  interchangeably  with  *  body.' 
*  bulk/  '  place '  by  '  situation.'  "  See  aboTe,  paragraph  39. 

'  In  the  second  of  the  passages  re- 


BODY  AS  A  CX3MPLEX  OF  RELATIONS.  91 

that  substance  and  relations  each  presuppose  the  other,  so  Bo  we 
body  presupposes  the  primary  qualities  as  so  many  relations  derive  th© 
which  form  its  essence  or  make  it  what  it  is,  while  these  body  from 
again  presuppose  body  as  the  matter  which  they  determine.  pnmAyy 
It  is  because  Locke  substitutes  for  this  intellectual  order  of  or^e^^^' 
mutual  presupposition  a  succession  of  sensations  in  time,  that  primary 
he  finds  himself  in  the  confusion  we  have  noticed — now  from  idea 
giving  the  priority  to  sensations  in  which  the  idea  of  body  of  body? 
is  supposed  to  be  conveyed,  and  from  it  deriving  the  ideas  of 
the  primary  qualities,  now  giving  it  to  these  ideas  themselves, 
and  deriving  the  idea  of  body  from  their  complication.    This 
is  just  such  a  contradiction  as  it  would  be  to  put  to-day 
before  yesterday.     We  may  escape  it  by  the  consideration 
that  in  the  case  before  us  it  is  not  a  succession  of  sensations 
in  time  that  we  have  to  do  with  at  all ;  that  ^  the  real  ^  is  an 
intellectual  order,  or  mind,  in  which  every  element,  being 
correlative  to  every  other,  at  once  presupposes  and  is  pre- 
supposed by  every  other ;  but  that  this  order  communicates 
itself  to  us  piecemeal,  in  a  process  of  which  the  first  con- 
dition on  oTur  part  is  the  conception  that  there  is  an  order, 
or  something  related  to  something  else ;  and  that  thus  the 
conception  of  qualified  substance,  which  in  its  definite  arti- 
culation is  the  end  of  all  oiur  knowledge,  is  yet  in  another 
form,  that  may  be  called  indifiEerently  either  abstract  or  con- 
fused,^ its  beginning.     This  way  of  escape,  however,  was  not 
open  to  Locke,  because  with  him  it  was  the  condition  of 
realiiy  in  the  idea  of  the  body  and  its  qualities  that  they 
should  be  *  actually  present  sensations.'    The  priority  then 
of  body  to  the  relations  of  extension,  distance,  &c.,  as  of 
that  in  which  these  relations  are  found,  must,  if  body  and 
extension  are  to  be  more  than  nominal  essences,  be  a  priority 
of  sensations  in  time.     But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  priority 
of  the  idea  of  space  to  the  ideas  of  its  several  modes,  and 
of  these  again  to  the  idea  of  body,  as  of  the  simple^  to  the 
more  complex,  must  no  less  than  the  other,  if  thjB  ideas  in 
question  are  to  be  real,  be  one  in  time.     Locke's  contra- 
diction, then,  is  that  of  supposing  that  of  two  sensations 
each  is  actually  present,  of  two  impacts  on  the  sensitive 
tablet  each  is  actually  made,  before  the  other. 

112.  From  such  a  contradiction,  even  though  he  was  not 

'  *  IndiiTereiitly    either    abstract  or      that  is  most  confused  the  least  can  bf 
eonfiued,'  becanse    of  the  conception      said ;  and  it  is  thus  most  abstract. 


92  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Hatha-  distinctly  aware  of  it,  he  could  not  but  seek  a  way  of  escape, 
id^?^  From  his  point  of  view  two  ways  might  at  first  sight  seem 
though  to  be  open — the  priority  in  sensitive  experience,  and  with  it 
•  primMT  r®^li*y»  might  be  assigned  exclusively  either  to  the  idea  of 
qualities  of  body  or  to  that  of  space.  To  whichever  of  the  two  it  is 
•'l^'l^^an  ^s^S°^^»  ^®  other  must  become  a  nominal  essence.  If  it 
ideal  ex-  is  the  idea  of  body  that  is  conveyed  to  the  mind  directly 
istenoe.'  from  without  through  sensation,  then  it  must  be  by  a  pro- 
cess in  the  mind  that  the  spatial  relations  are  abstracted 
from  it ;  and  conversely,  if  it  is  the  latter  that  are  given  in 
sensation,  it  must  be  by  a  mental  operation  of  compounding 
that  the  idea  of  body  is  obtained  from  them.  Now,  accord- 
ing to  Locke's  fundamental  notion,  that  the  reality  of  an 
idea  depends  upon  its  being  in  consciousness  a  copy  through 
impact  of  that  which  is  not  in  consciousness,  any  attempt  to 
retain  it  in  the  idea  of  space  while  sacrificing  it  in  that  of 
body  would  be  obviously  self-destructive.  Nor,  however  we 
might  re-write  his  account  of  the  relations  of  space  as  *  found 
in  bodies,'  could  we  avoid  speaking  of  them  as  relations  of 
some  sort ;  and  if  relations,  then  derived  jBrom  the  *  mind's 
carrying  its  view  from  one  thing  to  another,'  and  not 
*  actually  present  sensations.'  We  shall  not,  then,  be  sur- 
prised to  find  Locke  tending  to  the  other  alternative,  and 
gradually  forgetting  his  assertion  that  ^  a  circle  or  a  square 
are  the  same  whether  in  idea  or  in  existence,'  and  his 
elaborate  maintenance  of  the  *  real  existence '  of  a  vacuum, 
i.e.,  extension  without  body.  (Book  ii.  chap.  xiii.  sees.  21 
and  the  following,  and  xvii.  4.)  In  the  Fourth  Book  it  is 
body  aloud  that  has  real  existence,  an  existence  revealed 
by  actually  present  sensation,  while  all  mathematical  ideas, 
the  ideas  of  the  circle  and  the  square,  have  ^  barely  an  ideal 
existence '  (Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sec.  6) ;  and  this  means  nothing 
else  than  the  reduction  of  the  primary  qualities  of  body  to  a 
nominal  essence.  Our  iSeas  of  them  are  general  (Book  iv. 
chap.  iii.  sec.  24),  or  merely  in  the  mind.  *  There  is  no  in- 
dividual parcel  of  matter,  to  which  any  of  these  qualities 
are  so  annexed  as  to  be  essential  to  it  or  inseparable  from  it.' 
(Book  in.  chap.  vi.  sec.  6.)  How  should  there  be,  when  the 
^  individual  parcel '  means  that  which  copies  itself  by  impact 
in  the  present  sensation,  while  the  qualities  in  question  are 
relations  which  cannot  be  so  copied  P  Yet,  except  as  attach- 
ing to  such  a  parcel,  they  have  no  *  real  existence ; '  and, 


REALITY  AND  WORK  OF  THE  MIND.  03 

conversely,  tlie  *  body,'  from  which  they  arre  inseparable,  not 
being  an  individnal  parcel  of  matter  in  the  above  sense, 
innst  itself  be  nnreal  and  belong  merely  to  the  mind.  The 
*  body  *  which  is  rfial  has  for  ns  no  qualities,  and  that  reference 
to  it  of  the  *  actually  present  sensation  *  by  which  such  sen- 
sation is  distinguished  from  other  feeling,  is  a  reference  to 
something  of  which  nothing  can  be  said.  It  is  a  reference 
which  cannot  be  stated  in  any  proposition  really  true ;  and 
the  difference  which  it  constitutes  between  *  bare  vision '  and 
the  feeling  to  which  reality  corresponds,  must  be  either 
itself  unreal  or  unintelligible. 

118.  We  have  now  pursued  the  antithesis  between  reality  Summary 
and  the  work  of  the  mind  along  all  the  lines  which  Locke  1]^°^ 
indicates,  and  find  that  it  everywhere  eludes  us.  The  dis-  difficulties 
tinction,  which  only  appeared  incidentally  in  the  doctrine  of  ^^  ^f^*^, 
substance,  between  *the  being  and  the  idea  thereof — be- 
tween substance  as  ^ found'  and  substance  as  that  which 
*we  accustom  ourselves  to  suppose'— becomes  definite  and 
explicit  as  that  between  real  and  nominal  essence,  but  it 
does  so  only  that  the  essence,  which  is  merely  real,  may  dis- 
appear. Whether  we  suppose  it  the  quality  of  a  mere 
sensation,  as  such,  or  of  mere  body,  as  such,  we  find  that 
we  are  unawares  defining  it  by  relations  which  are  them- 
selves the  work  of  the  mind,  and  that  after  abstraction  of 
these  nothing  remains  to  give  the  antithesis  to  the  work  of 
the  mind  any  meaning.  Meanwhile  the  attitude  of  thought, 
when  it  has  cleared  the  antithesis  of  disguise,  but  has  not 
yet  found  that  each  of  the  opposites  derives  itself  from 
thought  as  much  as  the  other,  is  so  awkward  and  painful 
that  an  instinctive  reluctance  to  make  the  clearance  is  not 
to  be  wondered  at.  Over  against  the  world  of  knowledge, 
which  is  the  work  of  the  mind,  stands  a  real  world  of  which 
we  can  say  nothing  but  that  it  is  there,  that  it  makes  us 
aware  of  its  presence  in  every  sensation,  while  our  inter- 
pretation of  what  it  is,  the  system  of  relations  which  we 
read  into  it,  is  our  own  invention.  The  interpretation  is  not 
even  to  be  called  a  shadow,  for  a  shadow,  however  dim,  still 
reflects  the  reality ;  it  is  an  arbitrary  fiction,  and  a  fiction 
of  which  the  possibility  is  as  unaccountable  as  the  induce- 
ment to  make  it.  It  is  commonly  presented  as  consisting  in 
abstraction  fromi  the  concrete.  But  the  concrete,  just  so  Smp 
as  concrete,  i.e.,  a  complex  world  of  relations,  cannot  be  the 


M  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

real  if  the  separation  of  the  real  from  the  work  of  the  mind 
is  to  be  maintained.  It  must  itself  be  the  work  of  the  com- 
pounding mind,  which  mast  be  supposed  again  in  '  abstrac- 
tion' to  decompose  what  it  has  previonslj  compounded. 
~"ow,  it  is  of  the  essence  of  the  doctrine  in  question  that  it 
denies  all  power  of  origination  to  the  mind  except  in  the  way 
of  compounding  and  abstracting  given  impressions.  Its 
supposition  is,  that  whatever  precedes  the  work  of  compo- 
sition and  abstraction  must  be  real^  because  the  mind 
passively  receives  it :  a  supposition  which,  if  the  mind  could 
originate,  would  not  hold.  How,  then,  does  it  come  to  pass 
that  a  '  nominal  essence,'  consisting  of  definite  qualities,  is 
constructed  by  a  mind,  which  originates  nothing,  out  of  a 
*  real '  matter,  which,  apart  from  such  construction,  has  no 
qualities  at  aU  ?  And  why,  granted  the  construction,  should 
the  mind  in  '  abstraction '  go  through  the  Penelopean  exer- 
cise of  perpetually  unweaving  the  web  which  it  has  just 
jfovenP 


Why  they  114.  It  is  Hume's  more  logical  version  of  Locke's  doctrine 
^o  ^^^  that  first  forces  these  questions  to  the  firont.  In  Locke  him- 
h^  more.  Self  they  are  kept  back  by  inconsistencies,  which  we  have 
already  dwelt  upon.  For  the  real,  absolutely  void  of  intel- 
ligible qualities,  because  these  are  relative  to  the  mind, 
he  is  perpetually  substituting  a  real  constituted  by  such 
qualities,  only  with  a  complexity  which  we  cannot  exhaust* 
By  so  doing,  though  at  the  cost  of  sacrificing  the  opposition 
between  the  real  and  the  mental,  he  avoids  the  necessity  of 
admitting  that  the  system  of  the  sciences  is  a  mere  language^ 
well— or  ill — constructed,  but  unaccountably  and  without 
reference  to  things.  Finally,  he  so  far  forgets  the  opposition 
altogether.as  to  find  the  reality  of '  moral  and  mathematical ' 
knowledge  in  their  *  bare  ideality '  itself.  (Book  iv.  chap.  iv. 
sec.  6,  &c.)  Thus  with  him  the  divorce  between  knowledge 
and  reality  is  never  complete,  and  sometimes  they  appear  in 
perfect  fusion.  A  consideration  of  his  doctrine  of  propo- 
sitions will  show  finally  how  the  case  between  them  stands, 

^ asjie  left  it. 

They  re-  H^'  1^  *^®  Fourth  Book  of  the  Essay  the  same  ground 
appear  in  has  to  be  thrice  traversed  under  the  several  titles  of  *  know- 
trine^      ledge,'  *  truth,'  and  *  propositions.'     Knowledge  being  the 

propofli-  I  I  Simple  ideas,  since  the  mind  can      operating  on  the  mind.'     (Book    nr. 

'*  Mt.  |,y  QQ  means  make  them  to  itself,  must      chap.  v.  sec  4.) 

necessarily  be  the  product   of  things 


REAL  AND  VERBAL  TRUTH.  96 

perception  of  agFeement  or  disagreement  between  ideas,  the 
proposition  is  the  putting  together  or  separation  of  words, 
as  the  signs  of  ideas,  in  affirmative  or  negative  sentences 
(Book  nr.  chap.  v.  sec.  6),  and  truth — the  expression  of 
certainty  ^ — consists  in  the  correspondence  between  the  con- 
junction or  separation  of  the  signs  and  the  agreement  or 
disagreement  of  the  ideas.  (Book  iv.  chap.  v.  sec.  2.)  Thus, 
the  question  between  the  real  and  the  mental  affects  all 
these.  Does  this  or  that  perception  of  agreement  between 
ideas  represent  an  agreement  in  real  existence?  Is  its  cer- 
tainty a  real  certainty?  Does  such  or  such  a  proposition, 
being  a  correct  expression  of  an  agreement  between  ideas, 
also  through  this  express  an  agreement  between  things  P  Is 
its  truth  real,  or  merely  verbal  P 

n  6.  To  answer  these  questions,  according  to  Locke,  we  The 
must  consider  whether  the  knowledge,  or  the  proposition  ^®J^^ 
which  expresses  it,  concerns  substances,  i.e.,  ^  the  co-existence  by  a  pro- 
of ideas  in  nature,*  on  the  one  hand ;  or,  on  the  other,  either  gj'^'^?°' 
the  properties  of  a  mathematical  figure  or  '  moral  ideas.'    K  tain!^m«  j^ 
it  is  of  the  latter  sort,  the  agreement  of  the  ideas  in  the  ^^ 
mind  is  itself  their  agreement  in  reality,  since  the  ideas  '^' 
themselves  are  archetypes.     (Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sees.  6,  7.) 
It  is  only  when  the  ideas  are  ectjpes,  as  is  the  case  when  the 
proposition    concerns    substances,  that    the   doubt    arises 
whether  the  agreement  between  them  represents  an  agree- 
ment in  reality.     The  distinction  made  here  virtually  corre- 
sponds to  that  which  appears  in  the  chapters  on  the  reality 
and  adequacy  of  ideas  in  the  Second  Book,  and  again  in 
those  on  '  names '  in  the  Third.     There  the  '  complex  ideas 
of  modes   and  relation'    are  pronounced    necessarily  real 
adequate  and  true,  because,  ^  being  themselves  archetypes, 
tiiey  cannot  differ  from  their  archetypes.'     (Book  ii.  chap. 
XXX.  sec.  4.)  '    With  them  are  contrasted  simple  ideas  and 
complex  ideas  of  substances,  which  are  alike  ectypes,  but 

AH  knowledge  is  certain  according  it»  and  by   '  certainty/   in   distinction 

to  Locke   (Cf.   IV.  chap,  yi.   sec.   13,  from  this,  understand  its  relation  to  the 

'  certainty  is  requisite  to  knowledge '),  subject 

though    the    knowledge    must    be  ex-  *  Certainty  of  truth '  is,  in  like  man- 

presMd  before  the  term  '  certainty '  is  ner,  a  pleonastic  phrase,  there  being  no 

naturally    applied    to    it.    (Book    it.  difference  between  the  definition  of  it 

chap.  Ti,  sec  3.)     *  Certainty  of  know-  (Book  it.  chap.  Ti.  sec.  3)  and  that  of 

ledge '  is  thus  a  pleonastic  phrase,  which  *  truth'    simply,    given    in    Book    iv* 

only  seems  not  to  be  so  because  we  con-  chap.  t.  sec.  2. 

ceire  knowledge  to  have  a  relation  to  '  Cf.  Book  ii.  chap.  xxxi.  sec.  3,  and 

things  which  Locke's  definition  denies  xxxii.  sec.  17. 


06  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

with  this  difference  from  each  other,  that  the  simple  ideas  can- 
not but  be  faithful  copies  of  their  archetypes,  while  the  ideas 
of  substances  cannot  but  be  otherwise.    (Book  ii.  chap.  zxzi. 
sees.  2,  11,  &c.)     Thus,  '  the  names  of  simple  ideas  and  sub- 
stances, with  the  abstract  ideas  in  the  mind  which  they 
immediately  signify,  intimate  also  some  real  existence,  from 
which  was  derived  their  original  pattern.     But  the  names  of 
mixed  modes  terminate  in  the  idea  that  is  in   the  mind.' 
(Book  III.  chap.  iv.  sec.  2.)     *=  The  names  of  simple  ideas  and 
modes,'  it  is   added,  'signify  always  the   real   as  well  as 
nominal  essence  of  their  species ' — a  statement  which,  if  it  is 
to  express  Locke's   doctrine  strictly,   must  be  confined  to 
names  of  simple  ideas,  while  in  respect  of  modes  it  should 
run,  that  '  the  nominal  essence  which  the  names  of  these 
signify  is  itself  the  real.' 
when  the         H?-  But  though  the  distinction  between  different  kinds  of 
knowledge   knowledge  in  regard  to  reality  cannot  but  rest  on  the  same 
■ubBtan-      principle  as  that  drawn  between  different  kinds  of  ideas  in 
co^  the  same  regard,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that  in  the  doctrine  of 

the  Fourth  Book  *  knowledge  concerning  substances,'  in  con- 
trast with  that  in  which  *  our  thoughts  terminate  in  the  ab- 
stract ideas,'  has  by  itself  to  cover  the  ground  which,  in  the 
Second  and  Third  Book,  simple  ideas  and  complex  ideas  of 
substances  cover  together.  This  is  to  be  explained  by  the 
observation,  already  set  forth  at  large,^  that  the  simple  idea 
has  in  Locke's  Fourth  Book  become  explicitly  what  in  the 
previous  books  it  was  implicitly,  not  a  feeling  proper,  but  the 
conscious  reference  of  a  feeling  to  a  thing  or  substance. 
Only  because  it  is  thus  converted,  as  we  have  seen,  can  it 
constitute  the  beginning  of  a  knowledge  which  is  not  a 
simple  idea  but  a  conscious  relation  between  ideas,  or  have 
(what  yet  it  must  have  if  it  can  be  expressed  in  a  proposi- 
tion) that  capacity  of  being  true  or  false,  which  implies  *  the 
reference  by  the  mind  of  an  idea  to  something  extraneous  to 
it.'  (Book  II.  chap,  xxxii.  sec.  4.)  Thus,  what  is  said  of  the 
*  simple  idea '  in  the  Second  and  Third  Books,  is  in  the 
Fourth  transferred  to  one  form  of  knowledge  concerning  sub- 
stances, to  that,  namely,  which  consists  in  *  particular  ex- 
periment and  observation,'  and  is  expressed  in  singular 
propositions,  such  as  *  this  is  yellow,'  *  this  gold  is  now  solved 
in  aqua  regia.'     Such  knowledge  cannot  but  be  real,  the 

*  See  abore,  paragraph  25. 


CAN  GENERAL  TRUTHS  BE  REAL?        VT 

propontion  which  expresses  it  cannot  bat  have  real  oertainiy,  in  thiBOM 
becanse  it  is  the  effect  of  a  '  body  actaaUy  operating  upon  general 

>  /T>     T_  1-  •  i\    •     r  XI-        •        1     -J        •  truth  nnwt 

ns  (Book  iy.  chap.  xi.  sec.  1),  just  as  the  simple  idea  is  an  be  merelj 
ectype  directly  made  by  an  anshetype.  It  is  otherwise  with  ▼«rb«L 
complex  ideas  of  substances  and  with  general  knowledge  or 
propositions  abont  them.  A  gronp  of  ideas,  each  of  which, 
when  first  produced  by  a  *  body,^  has  been  real,  when  retained 
in  the  mind  as  representing  the  body,  becomes  unreal.  The 
complex  idea  of  gold  is  only  a  nominal  essence  or  the  signi- 
fication of  a  name ;  the  qualities  which  compose  it  are  merely 
ideas  in  the  mind,  and  Ihat  general  truth  which  consists  in 
a  correct  statement  of  the  relation  between  one  of  them  and 
another  or  the  whole — e.g., '  gold  is  soluble  in  aqua  regia ' — 
holds  merely  for  the  mind ;'  but  it  is  not  therefore  to  be  classed 
with  those  other  mental  truths,  which  constitute  mathemati- 
cal and  moral  knowledge,  and  which,  just  because  ^  merely 
ideal,'  are  therefore  reaL  Its  merely  mental  character 
renders  it  in  Locke's  language  a  ^  trifling  proposition,'  but 
does  not  therefore  save  it  from  being  really  untrue.  It 
is  a  '  trifling  proposition,'  for,  unless  solubility  in  aqua  regia 
is  included  in  tiie  complex  idea  which  the  sound  ^gold' 
stands  for,  the  proposition  which  asserts  it  of  gold  is  not  cer- 
tain, not  a  truth  at  alL  If  it  is  so  included,  then  the  pro- 
position is  but  Splaying  with  sounds.'  It  may  serve  to 
remind  an  opponent  of  a  definition  which  he  has  made  but 
is  forgetting,  but  ^  carries  no  knowledge  with  it  but  of  the 
signification  of  a  word,  however  certain  it  be.'  (Book  iv. 
chap.  viii.  sees.  5  &  9.)  Tet  there  is  a  real  gold,  outside  the 
mind,  of  which  the  complex  idea  of  gold  in  the  mind  most 
needs  try  to  be  a  copy,  though  the  conditions  of  real  exist- 
ence are  such  that  no  ^complex  idea  in  the  mind'  can 
possibly  be  a  copy  of  it.  Thus  the  verbal  truth,  which 
general  propositions  concerning  substances  express,  is  under 
a  perpetual  doom  of  being  really  untrue.  The  exemption  of 
mathematical  and  moral  knowledge  from  this  doom  remains 
an  unexplained  mercy.  Because  merely  mental,  such  know- 
ledge is  real — ^there  being  no  reality  for  it  to  m^«represent — 
and  yet  not  trifling.  The  proposition  that  Hhe  external 
angle  of  all  triangles  is  bigger  than  either  of  the  opposite 
internal  angles,'  has  that  general  certainty  which  is  never  to 
be  found  but  in  our  ideas,  yet  ^  conveys   instructive  real 

*  Book  IT.  chap.zi.  sec.  13,  irii,  9,&c. 
VOL.  L  H 


m  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

iCathe-  knowledge,'  the  predicate  being  '  a  necessary  consequence  of 
"J*^j5*^  the  precise  complex  idea '  which  forms  the  subject,  yet  *  not 
since  they  contained  in  it/  (  Book  it.  chap.  yiii.  sec.  8.)  ^  The  same 
concemnoii  might  be  said  apparently,  according  to  Locke's  judgment 
may  be^  (though  he  is  uot  SO  explicit  about  this),  of  a  proposition  in 
both  morals,  such  as  '  God  is  to  be  feared  and  obeyed  by  man/ 

anTceal.  (Book  iv.  chap.  xi«  sec.  13.)  *  But  how  are  such  propositions, 
at  once  abstract  and  real,  general  and  instructive,  to  be 
accounted  for  P  There  is  no  ^  workmanship  of  the  mind '  re* 
cognised  by  Locke  but  that  which  consists  in  compounding 
and  abstracting  (i.e.,  separating)  ideas  of  which  *  it  cannot 
originate  one.'  The  '  abstract  ideas '  of  mathematics,  the 
^  mixed  modes '  of  morals,  just  as  much  as  the  ideas  of  sub* 
stances,  must  be  derived  by  such  mental  artifice  from  a 
material  given  in  simple  feeling,  and  ^  real '  because  so  given. 
Yety  while  this  derivation  renders  ideas  of  substances  unreal 
in  contrast  with  their  real  ^  originals,'  and  general  proposi- 
tions about  them  ^  trifling,'  because,  while  ^  intimating  an 
existence,'  they  teU  nothing  about  it,  on  the  other  hand  it 
actually  constitutes  the  reality  of  moral  and  mathematical 
ideas.  Their  relation  to  an  original  disappears;  they  are 
themselves  archetjrpes,  from  which  the  mind,  by  its  own  act, 
can  elicit  other  ideas  not  already  involved  in  the  meaning  of 
their  names.  But  this  can  ojhj  mean  that  the  mind  has 
some  other  frmction  than  that  of  uniting  what  it  has  ^  found ' 
in  separation,  and  separating  again  what  it  has  thus  united 
1 — that  it  can  itself  originate. 
Bignifi-  118.  A  genius  of  such  native  force  as  Locke's  could  not 

*??^®  *^^  be  applied  to  philosophy  without  determining  the  lines  of 
trine.  future  speculation,  even  though  to  itself  they  remained  ob- 
scure. He  stumbles  upon  truths  when  he  is  not  looking  for 
them,  and  the  inconsistencies  or  accidents  of  his  system  are 
its  most  valuable  part.  Thus,  in  a  certain  sense,  he  may 
claim  the  authorship  at  once  of  the  popular  empiricism  of 
the  modem  world,  and  of  its  refritation.  He  fixed  the  prime 
article  of  its  creed,  that  thought  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
constitution  of  facts,  but  only  with  the  representation  of 
them  by  signs  and  the  rehearsal  to  itself  of  what  its  signs 
have  signified — in  brief,  that  its  function  is  merely  the 
analytical  judgment ;  yet  his  admissions  about  mathematical 

>  Jost  M  according  to  Kant  such  a         *  Cf .  Book  it.  chap.  iii.  see.  IS,  and 
pioposition  expresses  a  jndimeat '  vyn-      Book  ui.  chap.  xi.  sec.  16. 
thetical/  yet  •  A-priori.' 


MATHEMATICAL  TRUTH  'BARELY  n)EAL.'     dO 

knowledge  rendered  inevitable  the  Kantian  question,  *  How 
are  syntibetic  judgments  a-priori  possible? ' — which  was  to 
lead  to  the  recognition  of  thought  as  constituting  the  objec- 
tive  world,  and  thus  to  get  rid  of  the  antithesis  between 
thought  and  reality.  In  his  separation  of  the  datum  of  ex-  * 
perience  from  the  work^  of  thought  he  was  merelj  following 
the  Syllogistic  Logic,  which  really  assigns  no  work  to  the 
thought,  whose  office  it  professes  to'  magnify,  but  the  analysis 
of  given  ideas.  Taking  the  work  as  that  Logic  conceived  it 
(and  as  it  must  be  conceived  if  the,  separation  is  to  be  main- 
tained) he  showed — conclusively  as  against  Scholasticism — 
the  '  trifling'  character  of  the  necessary  and  universal  truths 
with  which  it  dealt.  Experience,  the  manifestation  of  the  real, 
regarded  as  a  series  of  events  which  to  us  are  sensations,  can 
only  yield  propositions  singular  as  the  events,  and  having  a 
truth  like  them  contingent.  By  consequence,  necessity  and 
universalily  of  connection  can  only  be  found  in  what  the  mind 
does  for  itself,  without  reference  to  reality,  when  it  analyses 
the  complex  idea  which  it  retains  as  the  memorandum  of  its 
past  single  experiences ;  i.e.,  in  a  relation'  between  ideas  or 
propositions  of  which  one  explicitly  includes  the  other.  Upon 
this  relation  syllogistic  reasoning  rests,  and,  except  so  &r  as 
it  may  be  of  use  for  convictiog  an  opponent  (or  oneself)  of 
inooi^istency,  it  has  nothing  to  say  against  such  nominalism 
as  the  above.  Hence,  with  those  followers  of  Locke  who 
have  been  most  faithful  to  their  master,  it  has  remained  the 
standing  rule  to  make  the  generality  of  a  truth  consist  in  its 
being  analytical  of  the  meaning  of  a  name,  and  ^ts  necessity  in 
its  being  included  in  one  previously  conceded.  Yet  if  such  were 
the  true  account  of  the  generality  and  necessity  of  mathe- 
matical propositions,  their  truth  according  to  Locke's 
explicit  statement  would  be  '  verbal  and  trifling,'  not,  as  it  is, 
'  real  and  instructive.' 

119,  The  point  of  this,  the  most  obvious,  contradiction  Fatal  to 
inherent  in  Locke'3  empiricism,  is  more  or  less  striking  ac-  J?®  ^^^^^ 
cording  to  the  fidelity  with  which  the  notion  of  matter-of-  themSiwl 
bet,  or  of  the  reality  that  is  not  of  the  mind,  proper  to  that  '^^^■» 
system,  is  adhered  io.  ■  When  the  popular  Logic  derived  ^n«rol,are 
from  Locke  has  so  far  forgotten  the  pit  whence  it  was  digged  go^^m 
as  to  hold  that  propositions  of  a  certainty  at  once  real  and  **^"*"^ 
general  can  be  derived  fix>m  experience,  and  to  speak  without 
question  of  'general  matters-of-fact '  in  a  sense  which  to  Locke 

H  s 


100 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


almost^  to  Hume  altogether,  would  have  been  a  contradiction 
in  termSy  it  naturally  finds  no  disturbance  in  regarding 
mathematical  certainty  as  different  not  in  kind,  but  only  in 
degree,  from  that  of  any  other  *  generalisation  from  experi- 
ence.' Not  aware  that  the  distinction  of  mathematical  from 
empirical  generality  is  the  condition  upon  which,  according  to 
Locke,  the  former  escapes  condemnation  as  '  trifling,'  it  does 
not  see  any  need  for  distinguishing  the  sources  from  which 
the  two  are  derived,  and  hence  goes  on  asserting  against 
imaginary  or  insignificant  opponents  that  mathematical 
truth  is  derived  from  *  experience ; '  which,  if  *  experience ' 
be  so  changed  from  what  Locke  understood  by  ib  as  to  yield 
general  propositions  concerning  matters-of-fact  of  other  than 
analytical  purport,  no  one  need  care  to  deny.  That  it  can 
yield  such  propositions  is,  doubtless,  the  supposition  of  the 
physical  sciences ;  nor,  we  must  repeat,  is  it  the  correctness 
of  this  supposition  that  is  in  question,  but  the  validity,  upon 
its  admission,  of  that  antithesis  between  experience  and  the 
work  of  thought,  which  is  the  '  be-aU  and  end-all '  of  the 
popular  Logic. 

120.  Locke,  as  we  have  seen,  after  all  the  encroachments 
made  unawares  by  thought  within  the  limits  of  that  ex- 
perience which  he  opposes  to  it— or,  to  put  it  conversely, 
r^^  r^  after  all  that  he  allows  *  nature  *  to  take  without  acknow- 
notsodear  ledgment  from  *  mind ' — is  still  so  far  faithful  to  the  opposi- 
»boutthi»  tion  as  to  *  suspect  a  science  of  nature  to  be  impossible.' 
This  suspicion,  which  is  but  a  hesitating  expression  of  the 
doctrine  that  general  propositions  concerning  substances  are 
merely  verbal,  is  the  exact  counterpart  of  the  doctrine  pro- 
nounced without  hesitation  that  mathematical  truths,  being 
at  once  real  and  general,  do  not  concern  nature  at  all.  Beal 
knowledge  concerning  nature  being  given  by  single  impres- 
sions of  bodies  at  single  times  operating  upon  us,  and  by 
consequence  being  expressible  only  in  singular  propositions, 
any  reality  which  general  propositions  state  must  belong 
merely  to  the  mind,  and  a  mind  which  can  originate  a  reality 
other  than  nature's  cannot  be  a  passive  receptacle  of  natural 
impressions.  Locke  admits  the  real  generality  of  mathe- 
matical truths,  but  does  not  face  its  consequences.  Hume, 
seeing  the  difficulty,  will  not  admit  the  real  generality.  The 
modem  Logic,  founded  on  Locke,  believing  in  the  possibility 
of  propositions  at  once  real  and  general  concerning  nature^ 


and  to  v»* 

eeived 
TiewB  of 
natural 


KNOWLEDGE  BASED  ON  EXPERIMENT.  101 

does  not  see  the  difficulty  at  all.  It  reckons  mathematical 
to  be  the  same  in  kind  with  natural  knowledge,  each  alike 
being  real  notwithptanding  its  generality;  not  aware  that 
by  so  doing,  instead  of  getting  rid,  as  it  fancies,  of  the  origi* 
natiye  function  of  thought  in  respect  of  mathematical  know- 
ledge, it  only  necessitates  the  supposition  of  its  being 
originatiye  in  respect  of  the  knowledge  of  nature  as 
welL 

121*  It  may  find  some  excuse  for  itself  in  the  hesitation  Ambiguity 
with  which  Locke  pronounces    the    impossibility   of   real  "to««>' 

*  ,  t  •  -r     essence 

generality  in  the  knowledge  of  nature — an  hesitation  which  causes  ]ik« 
necessarily  results  from  the  ambiguities,  already  noticed,  in  »mWgttit, 
his  doctrine  of  real  and  nominal  essence.  So  far  as  the  oppo-  science  of 
sition  between  the  nominal  and  real  essences  of  substances  n&tm, 
is  maintained  in  its  absoluteness,  as  that  between  eyery 
possible  collection  of  ideas  on  the  one  side,  and  something 
wholly  apart  from  thought  on  the  other,  this  impossibility 
foUows  of  necessity.  But  so  far  as  the  notion  is  admitted  of 
the  nominal  essence  being  in  some  way,  howeyer  inadequately, 
representatiye  of  the  real,  there  is  an  opening,  however  inde- 
finite, for  general  propositions  concerning  the  latter.  On 
the  one  hand  we  have  the  express  statement  that  ^  universal 
propositions,  of  whose  truth  and  falsehood  we  can  have 
certain  knowledge,  concern  not  existence*  {Book  iv.  chap. 
ix.  sec.  1).  They  are  founded  only  on  the  'relations  and 
habitudes  of  abstract  ideas'  (Book  iv.  chap  xii.  sec.  7);  and 
since  it  is  the  proper  operation  of  the  mind  in  abstraction 
to  consider  an  idea  under  no  other  existence  but  what  it  has 
in  the  understanding,  they  represent  no  knowledge  of  real 
existence  at  all  (Book  ly.  chap.  ix.  sec.  1).  Here  Zjocke  is 
consistently  following  his  doctrine  that  the  '  particularity  in 
time,'  of  which  abstraction  is  made  when  we  consider  ideas 
as  in  the  understanding,  is  what  specially  distinguishes  the 
real ;  which  thus  can  only  be  represented  by  *  actually  present 
sensation.'  It  properly  results  from  this  doctrine  that  tiie  pro- 
position representing  particular  experiment  and  observation 
is  only  true  of  real  existence  so  long  as  the  sensation,  in  which 
the  experiment  consists,  continues  present.  Not  only  is  the 
possibility  excluded  of  such  experiment  yielding  a  certainty 
which  shall  be  general  as  well  as  real,  but  the  particular  pro^ 
position  itself  can  only  be  reaUy  true  so  far  as  the  qualities, 
whose  co-existence  it  asserts,  are  present  sensations.     The  for- 


108  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Particular  nier  of  these  limitations  to  real  truth  we  find  Locke  generally 
^^o™^'  recognising,  and  consequently  suspecting  a  science  of  nature 
afford  to  be  impossible ;  but  the  latter,  which  would  be  fisktal  to  the 
Cowi^e.  supposition  of  there  being  a  real  nature  at  all,  even  when  he 
carries  furthest  the  reduction  of  reality  to  present  feeling,  he 
virtually  ignores.  On  the  other  hand,  there  keeps  appearing 
the  notion  that,  inasmuch  as  the  combination  of  ideas  which 
make  up  the  nominal  essence  of  a  substance  is  taken  from  a 
combination  in  nature  or  reality,  whenever  the  connexion 
between  any  of  these  is  necessary,  it  warrants  a  proposition 
vmversally  ^ue  in  virtue  of  the  necessary  connexion  between 
the  ideas,  and  really  true  in  virtue  of  the  ideas  being  taken 
from  reality.  According  to  this  notion,  though  *the  certainty 
of  universal  propositions  concerning  substances  is  very  narrow 
and  scanty,'  it  is  yet  possible  (Book  iv.  chap.  vi.  sec.  18).  It 
is  not  recognised  as  involving  that  contradiction  which  it  must 
involve  if  the  antithesis  between  reality  and  ideas  in  the  mind 
is  absolutely  adhered  to.  Nay,  inasmuch  as  certain  ideas  of 
primary  qualities,  e.g,  those  of  solidity  and  of  the  receiving  or 
communicating  motion  upon  impulse,  are  necessarily  connected, 
it  is  supposed  actually  to  exist  (Book  iv.  chap  iii.  sec.  14) .  It  is 
only  because,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  our  knowledge  of  the  relation 
between  secondary  qualities  and  primaiy  is  so  limited  that  it 
cannot  be  carried  further.  That  they  are  related  as  effects  and 
causes,  it  would  seem,  we  know ;  and  that  the  '  causes  work 
steadily,  and  effects  constantly  flow  fix)m  them,'  we  know  also ; 
but  *  their  connexions  and  dependencies  are  not  discoverable 
in  our  ideas'  (Book  iv.  chap.  iii.  sec.  29).  That,  if  discoverable 
in  our  ideas,  just  because  there  discovered,  the  connexion 
would  not  be  a  real  co-existence,  Locke  never  expressly  says« 
He  does  not  so  clearly  articulate  the  antithesis  between  rela- 
tions of  ideas  and  matters  of  fact.  If  he  had  done  so,  he  must 
also  have  excluded  from  real  existence  those  abstract  ideas  of 
body  which  constitute  the  scanty  knowledge  of  it  that  accor- 
ding to  him  we  do  possess  (Book  rv.  chap.  iii.  sec.  24).  He  is 
more  disposed  to  sigh  for  discoveries  that  would  make  physics 
capable  of  the  same  general  certainty  as  mathematics,  than 
to  purge  the  former  of  those  mathematical  propositions — 
really  true  only  because  having  no  reference  to  reality — which 
to  him  formed  the  only  scientific  element  in  them. 
What  122.  The  ambiguity  of  his  position  will  become  clearer  if 

!t*Sa*^*    w©  resort  to  his  favourite  *  instances  in  gold.'    The  proposi- 


EXPERIMENT  YIELDS  NO  GENERAL  TRUTH.         108 

tdon,  ^all  gold  is  soluble  in  aqua  regia,'  is  certainly  true,  if  afford,  ao- 
Buch  solubility  is  included  in  the  complex  idea  which  the  j^^*" 
word  '  gold '  stands  for,  and  if  such  inclusion  is  all  that  the 
proposition  purports  to  state.  It  is  equally  certain  and 
equally  trifling  with  the  proposition,  ^a  centaur  is  four-footed.* 
But,  in  fiu^t,  as  a  proposition  concerning  substance,  it  pur- 
ports to  state  more  than  this,  viz.  that  a  'body  whose 
complex  idea  is  made  up  of  yellow,  very  weighty,  ductile, 
hisible,  and  fixed,'  is  always  soluble  in  aqua  regia.  In  other 
words,  it  states  tiie  inyariable  co-existence  in  a  body  of  the 
complex  idea,  *  solubility  in  aqua  regia,'  with  the  gi-oup  of 
ideas  indicated  by  '  gold.'  Thus  understood — as  instructive 
or  synthetical — it  has  not  the  certainty  wliich  would  belong 
to  it  if  it  were  *  trifling,'  or  analytical,  *  since  we  can  never, 
from  the  consideration  of  the  ideas  themselves,  with  certainty 
affirm'  their  co-existence  (Book  iv.  chap.  vi.  sec  9).  If  we 
see  the  solution  actually  going  on,  or  can  recall  the  sight  of 
it  by  memory,  we  can  affirm  its  co-existence  with  the  ideas 
in  question  in  that '  bare  instance;'  and  thus,  on  the  principle 
that  'whatever  ideas  have  once  been  united  in  nature  maybe 
so  united  again '  (Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sec.  12),  infer  a  capacity 
of  co-existence  between  the  ideas,  but  that  is  all.  '  Con- 
stant observation  may  assist  our  judgments  in  guessing'  an 
invariable  actual  co-existence  (Book  iv.  chap.  viii.  sec.  9) ; 
but  beyond  guessing  we  cannot  get.  K  our  instructive 
proposition  concerning  co-existence  is  to  be  general  it 
must  remain  problematical.  It  is  otherwise  with  mathe- 
matical propositions.  '  If  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  were 
once  equal  to  two  right  angles,  it  is  certain  that  they  always 
win  be  so ;'  but  only  because  such  a  proposition  concerns 
merely  *  the  habitudes  and  relations  of  ideas.'  '  If  the  per- 
ception that  the  same  ideas  will  eternally  have  the  same 
habitudes  and  relations  be  not  a  sufficient  ground  of  know- 
ledge, there  could  be  no  knowledge  of  general  propositions  in 
mathematics ;  for  no  mathematical  demonstration  could  be 
other  than  particular :  and  when  a  man  had  demonstrated 
any  proposition  concerning  one  triangle  and  circle,  his  know- 
lec^  would  not  reach  bejond  that  particular  diagram'  (Book 
IV.  chap.  i.  sec.  9). 

123.  To  a  reader,  fresh  from  our  popular  treatises  on  Logic,  Not  the 
such  language  would  probably  at  first  present  no  difficulty.  ^?j^^^^ 
He  would  merely  lament  that  Locke,  as  a  successor  of  Bacon,  now  sup- 


104  GENERAL  mTRODUCTION. 

poMd  to  be  was  not  better  ax^quainted  with  the  *  Inductive  methods,'  and 
g^^^^'^'  thus  did  not  understand  how  an  observation  of  co-existence 
in  the  bare  instance,  if  the  instance  be  of  the  right  sort,  may 
warrant  a  universal  affirmation.  Or  he  may  take  the  other 
side,  and  regard  Locke's  restriction  upon  general  certainty  as 
conveying,  not  any  doubt  as  to  the  validity  of  the  inference 
from  an  observed  case  to  all  cases  where  the  conditions  are 
ascertainably  the  same,  but  a  true  sense  of  the  difficulty  of 
ascertaining  in  any  other  case  that  the  conditions  are  the 
same.  On  looking  closer,  however,  he  will  see  that,  so  far 
from  Locke's  doctrine  legitimately  allowing  of  such  an  adap- 
tation to  the  exigencies  of  science,  it  is  inconsistent  with 
itself  in  admitting  the  reality  of  most  of  the  conditions  in  the 
case  supposed  to  be  observed,  and  thus  in  allowing  the  real 
truth  even  of  the  singular  proposition.  This  purports  to 
state,  according  to  Locke's  terminology,  that  certain  'ideas' 
do  now  or  did  once  co-exist  in  a  body.  But  the  ideas,  thus 
stated  to  co-exist,  according  to  Locke's  doctrine  that  real 
existence  is  only  testified  to  by  actual  present  sensation,  differ 
from  each  other  as  that  which  really  exists  from  that  which 
Yet  more  does  not.  In  the  particular  experiment  of  gold  being  solved 
♦iian  Locke  in  aqua  regia,  from  the  complex  idea  of  solubility  an  inde- 
titled  to  finite  deduction  would  have  to  be  made  for  qualification  by 
suppose  it  ideas  retained  in  the  understanding:  before  we  could  reach 
^  '  the  present  sensation ;  and  not  only  so,  but  the  group  of 
ideas  indicated  by  *  gold,'  to  whose  co-existence  with  solu- 
bility the  experiment  is  said  to  testify,  as  Locke  himself  says, 
form  merely  a  nominal  essence,  while  the  body  to  which  we 
ascribe  this  essence  is  something  which  we  '  accustom  our- 
selves to  suppose,'  not  any  *  parcel  of  matter '  having  a  real 
existence  in  nature.^  In  asserting  the  co-existence  of  the 
ideas  forming  such  a  nominal  essence  with  the  actual  sensa- 
tion supposed  to  be  gf].ven  in  the  experiment,  we  change  the 
meaning  of  ^  existence,'  between  the  beginning  and  end  of 
the  assertion,  from  that  according  to  which  all  ideas  exist  to 
that  according  to  which  existence  has  no  *  connexion  with  any 
other  of  our  ideas  but  those  of  ourselves  and  God,'  but  is  tes- 
tified to  by  present  sensation.*  This  paralogism  escapes  Locke 
just  as  his  equivocal  use  of  the  term  *  idea '  escapes  him.  The 
distinction,  fixed  in  Hume's  terminology  as  that  between  im- 

'  See  aboTe,  pniagraphB  35,  94,  See. 

'  See  above,  parngraph  30  and  the  following. 


SCIENCE  OF  NATURE,  IF  ANY,  MATHEMATICAL.     105 

pression  and  idea,  forces  it&elf  upon  him,  as  we  haYe  seen,  in 
the  Fourth  book  of  the  Essay,  where  the  whole  doctrine  of 
real  existence  turns  upon  it,  but  alongside  of  it  survives  the 
notion  that  ideas,  though  'in  the  mind'  and  forming  a 
nominal  essence,  are  yet,  if  rightly  taken  from  things,  ectypes 
of  realiiy.  Thus  he  does  not  see  that  the  co-existence  of 
ideas,  to  which  the  particular  experiment,  as  he  describes  it, 
testifies,  is  nothing  else  than  the  co-existence  of  an  event 
with  a  conception— -of  that  which  is  in  a  particular  time,  and 
(according  to  him)  only  for  that  reason  real,  with  that  which 
is  not  in  time  at  all  but  is  an  unreal  abstraction  of  the  mind's 
making.^  The  reality  given  in  the  actual  sensation  cannot, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  be  discovered  to  have  a  necessary  con- 
nexion with  the  ideas  that  form  the  nominal  essence,  and 
therefore  cannot  be  asserted  universally  to  co-exist  with 
them;  but  with  better  faculties,  he  thinks,  the  discovery 
might  be  made  (Book  iv.  chap.  iii.  sec.  16).  It  does  not  to 
him  imply  such  a  contradiction  as  it  must  have  done  if  he 
had  steadily  kept  in  view  his  doctrine  that  of  particular  {i.e. 
real)  existence  our  *  knowledge  *  is  not  properly  knowledge  at 
all,  but  simply  sensation — such  a  contradiction  as  was  to 
Hume  involved  in  the  notion  of  deducing  a  matter  of  fact. 

124.  It  results  that  those  followers  of  Locke,  who  hold  the  with 
distinction  between  propositions  of  mathematical  certainty  J^^«  ™; 
and  those  concerning  real  existence  to  be  one  rather  of  degree  truths, 
than  of  kind,  though  they  have  the  express  words  of  their  though 
master  against  them,  can  find  much  in  his  way  of  thinking  ]^  ^f 
on  their  side.     This,  however,  does  not  mean  that  he  in  any  naturo. 
case  drops  the  antithesis  between  matters  of  fact  and  rela- 
tions of  ideas  in  favour  of  matters  of  fact,  so  as  to  admit  that 
mathematical  pro|X>sitions  concern  matters  of  fact,  but  that  he 
sometimes  drops  it  in  favour  of  relations  of  ideas,  so  as  to  re- 
present real  existence  as  consisting  in  such  relations.     If  the 
matter  of  fact,  or  real  existence,  is  to  be  found  only  in  the 
event  constituted  or  reported  by  present  feeling,  such  a  re- 
lation of  ideas,  by  no  manner' of  means  reducible  to  an  event., 
as  the  mathematical  proposition  states,  can  have  no  sort  of 
connection  with  it.     But  if  real  existence  is  such  that  the 
relations  of  ideas,  called  primary  qualities  of  matter,  consti- 
tute it,  and  the  qualities  included  in  our  nominal  essences  are 

'  See  aboTe,  paragraphs  46,  80, 85, 97. 


106  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

its  copies  or  efiFects,  then,  as  on  the  one  side  our  complex 
ideas  of  substances  only  faU  of  reality  through  want  of  ful- 
ness, or  through  mistakes  in  the  process  by  which  they  are 

*  taken  from  things,'  so,  on  the  other  side,  the  mental  truth 
of  mathematical  propositions  need  only  fail  to  be  real  because 
the  ideas,  whose  relations  they  state,  are  considered  in  ab- 
straction from  conditions  which  qualify  them  in  real  exist- 
ence. *  K  it  is  true  of  the  idea  of  a  triangle  that  its  three 
angles  equal  two  right  ones,  it  is  true  also  of  a  triangle, 
wherever  it  really  exists  "  (Book  iv.  chap.  iv.  sec.  6).  There 
is,  then,  no  incompatibility  between  the  idea  and  real  exist- 
ence. Mathematical  ideas  might  fairly  be  reckoned,  like 
those  of  substances,  to  be  taken  from  real  existence ;  but 
though,  like  these,  inadequate  to  its  complexity,  to  be  saved 
from  the  necessary  infirmities  which  attach  to  ideas  of  sub- 
stances becaase  not  considered  as  so  taken,  but  merely  as  in 
the  mind.  There  is  language  about  mathematics  in  Locke 
that  may  be  interpreted  in  this  direction,  though  his  most 
explicit  statements  are  on  the  other  side.  It  is  not  our 
business  to  adjust  them,  but  merely  to  point  out  the  op- 
posite tendencies  between  which  a  clear-sighted  operator 
on  the  material  given  by  Locke  would  find  that  he  had  to 
choose. 

Two  lines        125.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  the  identification  of  real 
?^  L^^^*   existence  with  the  momentary  sensible  event.     This  view,  of 
between  *     which  the  proper  result  is  the  exclusion  of  predication  con- 
which  a      cerning  real  existence  altogether,  appears  in  Locke's  restric- 
wouldhave  tion  of  such  predication  to  the  singular  proposition,  and  in 
to  chose      hig  converse  assertion  that  propositions  of  mathematical  cer- 
tainty *  concern  not  existence '  (Book  rv.  chap.iv.sec.  8).  The 
embajrassment  resulting  from  such  a  doctrine  is  that  it  leads 
round  to  the  admission  of  the  originativeness  of  thought  and 
of  the  reality  of  its  originations,  with  the  denial  of  which  it 
starts.^   It  leads  Locke  himself  along  a  track,  which  his  later 
followers  scarcely  seem  to  have  noticed,  when  he  treats  the 

*  never  enough  to  be  admired  discoveries  of  Mr.  Newton '  as 
having  to  do  merely  with  the  relations  of  ideas  in  distinction 
from  things,  and  looks  for  a  true  extension  of  knowledge — 
neither  in  syllogism  which  can  yield  no  instructive,  nor  in 
experiment  which  can  yield  no  general,  certainty — but  only 
in  a  further  process  of '  singling  out  and  laying  in  order  in- 

*  See  aboTe,  paragraph  117f  sub.  fin. 


CAN  THOUGHT  ORIGINATE?  107 

termediate  ideas,'  which  are  *  real  as  well  as  uominal  essences 
of  their  species/  because  they  have  no  reference  to  archetypes 
elsewhere  than  in  the  mind  (Book  it.  chap.  vii.  sec  11,  and 
Book  iv.  chap.  xii.  sec.  7).  On  the  other  hand  there  is  the 
notion  that  ideas,  without  distinction  between '  actual  sensa- 
tion' and  ^idea  in  the  mind/  are  taken  &om  permanent 
things,  and  are  real  if  correctly  so  taken.  From  this  it  results 
that  propositions,  universally  true  as  representing  a  necessary 
relation  between  ideas  of  primary  qualities,  are  true  also  of 
real  existence;  and  that  an  extension  of  such  real  certainty 
through  the  discovery  of  a  necessary  connexion  between  ideas 
of  primary  and  those  of  secondary  qualities,  though  scarcely 
to  be  hoped  for,  has  no  inherent  impossibility.  It  is  this 
notion,  again,  that  unwittingly  gives  even  that  limited  signi- 
ficance to  the  particular  experiment  which  Locke  assigns 
to  it,  as  indicating  a  co-existence  between  ideas  present  as 
sensations  and  those  which  can  only  be  regarded  as  in  the 
mind.  Nor  is  it  the  intrinsic  import  so  much  as  the  expres- 
sion of  this  notion  that  is  altered  when  Locke  substitutes  an 
order  of  nature  for  substance  as  that  in  which  the  ideas  co- 
exist. In  his  Fourth  Book  he  so  far  departs  from  the  doctrine 
implied  in  his  chapters  on  the  reality  and  adequacy  of  ideas 
and  on  the  names  of  substances,  as  to  treat  the  notion  of 
several  single  subjects  in  which  ideas  co-exist  (which  he  still 
holds  to  be  the  proper  notion  of  substances),  as  a  fiction  of 
thought.  There  are  no  such  single  subjects.  What  we  deem 
so  are  really  *  retainers  to  other  parts  of  nature.'  *  Their  ob- 
servable qualities,  actions,  and  powers  are  owing  to  something 
without  them ;  and  there  is  not  so  complete  and  perfect  a 
part  that  we  know  of  nature,  which  does  not  owe  the  being 
it  has,  and  the  excellencies  of  it,  to  its  neighbours '  (Book  rv. 
chap.  vi.  sec.  11).  As  thus  conceived  of,  the  ^objective  order' 
which  our  experience  represents  is  doubtless  other  than  that 
collection  of  fixed  separate  ^  things,'  implied  in  the  language 
about  substances  which  Locke  found  in  vogue,  but  it  remains 
an  objective  order  still — an  order  of  ^  qualities,  actions,  and 
powers '  which  no  midtitude  of  sensible  events  could  consti- 
tute, but  apart  fix)m  which  no  sensible  event  could  have  such 
significance  as  to  render  even  a  singular  proposition  of  real 
truth  possible. 

126.  It  remains  to  inquire  how,  with  Locke,  the  ideas  of  ^^oSriwl 
self  and  Grod  escape  subjection  to  those  solvents  of  reality  ofGodtnd 

thewraL 


108  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

which,  with  more  or  less  of  consistency  and  consciousness,  he 
applied  to  the  conceptions  on  which  the  science  of  nature 
rests.     Such  an  enquiry  forms  the  natural  transition  to  the 
next  stage  in  the  history  of  his  philosophy.   It  was  Berkeley's 
practical  interest  in  these  ideas  that  held  him  back  from  a 
development  of  his  master's  principles,  in  which  he  would 
haye  anticipated  Hume,  and  finally  brought  him  to  attach 
that  other  meaning  to  the  ^  new  way  of  ideas '  faintly  adum- 
brated in  the  later  sections  of  his  'Siris,'  which  gives  to 
Beason  the  functions  that  Locke  had  assigned  to  Sense. 
TWBking         127.  The  dominant  notion  of  the  self  in  Locke  is  that  of 
— flouioeof  ^^  inward  substance,  or  'substratum  of  ideas,'  co-ordinate 
the  saiiM      with  the  outward,  *  wherein  they  do  subsist,  and  from  which 
outer  Mb-    *^®y  ^^  result.'     *  Sensation  convinces  that  there  are  solid 
extended  substances,  and  reflection  that  there  are  thinking 
ones'  (Book  ii.  chap.  xxiiL  sec.  29).    We  have  already  seen 
how,  without  disturbance  from  his  doctrine  of  the  fictitious- 
ness  of  universals,  he  treats  the  simple  idea  as  carrying  with  it 
the  distinction  of  outward  and  inward,  or  relations  severally 
to  a  ^  thing'  and  to  a  *  mind.'    It  reports  itself  ambiguously 
as  a  quality  of  each  of  these  separate  substances.     It  is  now, 
or  was  to  begin  with,  the  result  of  an  outward  thing  'actually 
operating  upon  us ;'  for  *  of  simple  ideas  the  mind  cannot 
make  one  to  itself:'  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  'perception,' 
and  perception  is  an  '  operation  of  the  mind.'  In  other  words 
it  is  at  once  a  modification  of  the  mind  by  something  of 
which  it  is  consciously  not  conscious,  and  a  modification  of 
the  mind  by  itself — the  two  sources  of  one  and  the  same 
modification  being  each  determined  only  as  the  contradictory 
of  the  other.     Thus,  when  we  come  to  probe  the  familiar 
metaphors  under  which  Locke  describes  Eeflection,  as  a  'foun- 
tain of  ideas'  other  than  sensation,  we  find  that  the  confusions 
which  we  have  already  explored  in  dealing  with  the  ideas  of 
sensation  recur  under  added  circumstances  of  embarrassment. 
Not  only  does  the  simple  idea  of  reflection,  like  that  of  sen- 
sation, turn  out  to  be  already  complicated  in  its  simplicity 
with  the  superinduced  ideas  of  cause  and  relation,  but  the 
causal  substance  in  question  turns  out  to  be  one  which,  from 
being  actually  nothing,  becomes  something  by  acting  upon 
itself;  while  all  the  time  the  result  of  this  action  is  indistin- 
guishable fix)m  that  ascribed  to  the  opposite,  the  external, 
cause. 


THINmNG  SUBSTANCE.  100 

128.  To  a  reader  to  whom  Locke's  langnage  has  always  Of  wUch 
seemed  to  be — as  indeed  it  is — simply  that  of  common  sense  ""*^^!|! 
and  life,  in  writing  the  above  we  shall  seem  to  be  creating  a  Uon  the 
difficulty  where  none  is  to  be  found.  Let  us  turn,  then,  to  ^^^^^ 
one  of  the  less  prolix  passages,  in  which  the  distinction 
between  the  two  sources  of  ideas  is  expressed :  ^  External 
objects  furnish  the  mind  with  the  ideas  of  sensible  qualities, 
which  are  all  those  different  perceptions  they  produce  in  us ; 
and  the  mind  famishes  the  understanding  with  ideas  of  its 
own  operations'  (Book  u.  chap.  i.  sec.  5).  We  have  seen 
already  that  with  Locke  perception  and  idea  are  equivalent 
terms.  It  only  needs  further  to  be  pointed  out  that  no  dis- 
tinction can  be  maintained  between  his  usage  of  ^  mind '  and 
of '  understanding,'  ^  and  that  the  simple  ideas  of  the  mind's 
own  operations  are  those  of  perception  and  power,  which  must 
begiven  in  and  with  every  idea  of  a  sensible  quality.^  Avoiding 
synonyms,  then,  and  recalling  the  results  of  our  examination 
of  the  terms  involved  in  the  first  clause  of  the  passage 
before  us,  we  may  re-write  the  whole  thus :  '*  Creations  of 
the  mind,  which  yet  are  external  to  it,  produce  in  it  those 
perceptions  of  their  qualities  which  they  do  produce ;  and  the 
mind  produces  in  itself  the  perception  of  these,  its  own,  per- 
ceptions.' 

129.  This  attempt  to  present  Locke's  doctrine  of  the  rela-  Thatwldeh 
tion  between  the  mind  and  the  world,  as  it  would  be  without  ^  ^^    . 

B0I1FC6  01 

phraseological  disguises,  must  not  be  ascribed  to  any  polemi-  eubstantia- 
cal  interest  in  making  a  great  writer  seem  to  talk  nonsense.  ^^^^^^ 
The  greatest  writer  must  fall  into  confusions  when  he  brings  suUtanctt. 
under  the  conceptions  of  cause  and  substance  the  self-con- 
scious thought  which  is  their  source ;  and  nothing  else  than 
this  is  involved  in  Locke's  avowed  enterprise  of  knowing  that 
which  renders  knowledge  possible  as  he  might   know  any 
other  object.    The  enterprise  naturally  falls  into  two  parts, 
corresponding  to  that  distinction  of  subject  and  object  which 
self-consciousness  involves.     Hitherto  we  have  been  dealing 
with  it  on  the  objective  side — with  the  attempt  to  know 
knowledge  as  a  result  of  experience  received  through  the 
senses — and  have  found  the  supposed  source  of  thought 
already  charged  with  its  creations ;  with  the  relations  of  inner 

1  A»  beoomM  apparent  on  examina-      sec  1,  inb.  fin. ;  and  Book  n.  chap.  L 
tkmof  Baehpa88age8,asBookii.chap.i.      aec  23. 

*  See  above,  paragraphs  11,  12,  \6 


110  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

and  outer,  of  substance  ^and  attribute,  of  cause  and  effect,  of 
appearance  and  reality.  The  supposed  ^  outward '  turns  ont 
to  have  its  outwardness  constituted  by  thought,  and  thus  to 
be  inward.  The  ^  outer  sense  *  is  only  an  outer  sense  at  all 
so  far  as  feelings,  by  themselves  neither  outward  nor  inward, 
are  by  the  mind  referred  to  a  thing  or  cause  which  ^  the  mind 
supposes;'  and  only  thus  have  its  reports  a  prerogative  of 
reality  over  the  *  fantasies,*  supposed  merely  of  the  mind.  . 
Meanwhile,  unable  to  ignore  the  subjective  side  of  self- 
consciousness,  Locke  has  to  put  an  inward  experience  as  a 
separate,  but  co-ordinate,  source  of  knowledge  alongside  of 
the  outer.  But  this  inward  experience,  simply  as  a  succession 
of  feelings,  does  not  differ  from  the  outer :  it  only  so  differs 
as  referred  to  that  very  *  thinking  thing,'  called  the  mind, 
which  by  its  supposition  of  causal  substance  has  converted 
feeling  into  an  experience  of  an  outer  thing.  ^  Mind '  thus, 
by  the  relations  which  it  *  invents,'  constitutes  both  the  inner 
and  outer,  and  yet  is  treated  as  itself  the  inner  '  substratum 
which  it  accustoms  itself  to  suppose.*  It  thus  becomes  the 
creature  of  its  own  suppositions.  Nor  is  this  all.  This, 
indeed,  is  no  more  than  the  fate  which  it  must  suffer  at  the 
hands  of  every  philosopher  who,  in  Kantian  language,  brings 
the  source  of  the  Categories  under  the  Categories.  But  with 
Locke  the  constitution  of  the  outer  world  by  mental  suppo- 
sition, however  uniformly  implied,  is  always  ignored ;  and 
thus  mind,  as  the  inward  substance,  is  not  only  the  creature 
of  its  own  suppositions,  but  stands  over  against  a  real  exis- 
tence, of  which  the  reality  is  held  to  consist  just  in  its  being 
the  opposite  of  all  such  suppositions :  while,  after  all,  the 
effect  of  th^se  mutually  exclusive  causes  is  one  and  the  same 
experience,  one  and  the  same  system  of  sequent  and  co- 
existent ideas. 
To  gat  rid  130.  Is  it  then  a  case  of  joint-effect  P  Do  the  outer  and 
ioOTceof  ^'  inner  substances  combine,  like  mechanical  forces,  to  produce 
ideas  in  the  psychical  result  ?  Against  such  a  supposition  a  follower 
S^°"  tor  ^^  Locke  would  find  not  only  the  language  of  his  master, 
would  be  with  whom  perception  appears  indifferently  as  the  result  of 
^iB6  to  y^Q  outer  or  inner  cause,  but  the  inherent  impossibility  of 
analysing  the  effect  into  separate  elements.  The  '  Law  of 
Parcimony,*  then,  will  dictate  to  him  that  one  or  other  of  the 
causes  must  be  dispensed  with ;  nor,  so  long  as  he  takes 
Locke's  identification  of   the  outwaxd  with  the  real  for 


WHERE  IS  rr  ULTIMATELY  TO  BE  FOUND?         Ill 

granted,  will  he  have  much  doubt  as  to  which  of  the  two  must 
go.  To  get  rid  of  the  cansalitj  of  mind,  however,  though  it 
might  not  be  nntme  to  the  tendency  of  Locke,  wonld  be 
to  lose  sight  of  his  essential  merit  as  a  formnlator  of  what 
everyone  thinks,  which  is  that,  at  whatever  cost  of  confusion 
or  contradiction,  he  at  least  formulates  it  fully.  In  him  the 
'  Dialectic,'  which  popular  belief  implicitly  involves,  goes  on 
under  our  eyes.  If  the  primacy  of  self-conscious  thought  is 
never  recognized,  if  it  remains  the  victim  of  its  own  misun- 
derstood creations,  there  is  at  least  no  attempt  to  disguise  the 
unrest  which  attaches  to  it  in  this  self-imposed  subjection. 

181.  We  have  already  noticed  how  the  inner  ^tablet,'  on  The  mind, 
which  the  outer  thing  is  supposed  to  act,  is  with  Locke  per-  ^^^^ 
petually  receding.*   It  is  first  the  brain,  to  which  the  *  motion  poaee^to^ 
of  the  outward  parts '  must  be  continued  in  order  to  consti-  matter, 
tute  sensation  (Book  n.  chap.  ix.  sec.  8).    Then  perception  ^?^|^ 
is  distinguished  from  sensation,  and  the  brain  itself,  as  the  ing. 
subject  of  sensation,  becomes  the  outward  in  contrast  with  the 
understanding  as  the  subject  of  perception.*  Then  perception, 
from  being  simply  a  reception,  is  converted  into  an  *  opera- 
tion,' and  thus  into  an  efficient  of  ideas.    The  ^  understand- 
ing '  itself,  as  perceptive,  is  now  the  outward  which  makes 
on  the  *  mind,'  as  the  inner  *  tablet,'  that  impression  of  its 
own  operation   in    perception  which  is   called  an  idea  of 
reflection.'    Nor  does  the  regressive  process — the  process  of 
finding  a  mind  within  the  mind — stop  here,  though  the  dis- 
tinction of  inner  and  outer  is  not  any  further  so  explicitly 
employed  in  it.     From  mind,  as  receptive  of,  and  operative 
about,  ideas,  i.  e.  consciousness,  is  distinguished  mind  as  the 

*  substance  within  us '  of  which  consciousness  is  an  *  opera-- 

tion '  that  it  sometimes  exercises,  sometimes  (a.  g.  when  it  ' 

sleeps)  does  not  (Boox  ii.  chap.  i.  sees.  10-12) ;  and  from 
this  thinking  substance  again  is  distinguished  the  man  who 

*  finds  it  in  himself'  and  carries  it  about  with  him  in  a  coach 
or  on  horseback  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  20) — the  person, 
^  consisting  of  soul  and  body,'  who  is  prone  to  sleep  and  in 
sound  sleep  is  unconscious,  but  whose  personal  identity 

■  See  abore,  iMragraph  14.  mind  impresring  the  nnden^nding,  and 

*  Book  n.,  chap.  i.  sec.  23.  *  Senea-  of  the  understanding  impressing  the 
tion  IB  such  an  hnpreBsion  made  in  some  mind,  with  ideas  of  reflection,  but  as  he 
pan  of  the  body,  as  produces  some  per-  specially  defines  *  understanding'  as  tha 
cepdoninthe  understanding.'  ^perceptiye  power'  (Book  ii.  chap.  21, 

*  lioeke  speaks  indilferentlj  of  the  sec.  25.),  I  have  written  as  abore. 


112  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

strangely  consists  in  sameness  of  consciousness,  sameness  of 
an  occasional  operation  of  part  of  himself.* 
Two  wnyB  182.  In  the  history  of  subsequent  philosophy  two  typical 
d^ffi°^iti^^  methods  have  appeared  of  dealing  with  this  chaos  of  anti- 
nomies. One,  which  we  shall  have  to  treat  at  large  in 
writing  of  Hume,  aflfects  to  dispose  of  both  the  outward  and  the 
inward  synthesis — both  of  the  unity  of  feelings  in  a  subject 
matter  and  of  their  unity  in  a  subject  mind — as  *  fictions  of 
thought.^  This  method  at  once  suggests  the  vital  ques- 
tion whether  a  mind  which  thus  invents  has  been  effeciivelj 
suppressed — whether,  indeed,  the  theory  can  be  so  much  as 
stated  without  a  covert  assumption  of  that  which  it  claims 
to  have  destroyed.  The  other  method,  of  which  Kant  is  the 
parent,  does  not  attempt  to  efface  the  apparent  contradic- 
tions which  beset  the  *  relation  between  mind  and  matter ;  * 
but  regarding  them  as  in  a  certain  sense  inevitable,  traces 
them  to  their  source  in  the  application  to  the  thinking  Ego 
itself  of  conceptions,  which  it  does  indeed  constitute  in  virtue 
of  its  presence  to  phenomena  given  under  conditions  of  time, 
but  under  which  for  that  very  reason  it  cannot  itself  be 
known.  It  is  in  virtue  of  the  presence  of  the  self-conscious 
unit  to  the  manifold  of  feeling,  according  to  this  doctrine, 
that  the  latter  becomes  an  order  of  definite  things,  each  ex- 
ternal to  the  other ;  and  it  is  only  by  a  false  inclusion  within 
this  onler  of  that  which  constitutes  it  that  the  Ego  itself 
becomes  a  *  thinking  thing  *  with  other  things  outside  it.  The 
result  of  such  inclusion  is  that  the  real  world,  which  it  in 
the  proper  sense  makes,  becomes  a  reality  external  to  it,  yet 
apart  from  which  it  would  not  be  actually  anythrog.  Thus 
with  Locke,  though  the  mind  has  a  potential  existence  of  its 
own,  it  is  experience  of  *  things  without  it'  that  'furnishes'  it 
or  makes  it  what  it  actually  is.  But  the  relation  of  such 
outer  things  to  the  mind  cannot  be  spoken  of  without  con- 
tradiction. If  supposed  outward  as  bodies,  they  have  to  be 
brought  within  consciousness  as  objects  of  sensation  ;  if  sup- 
posed outward  as  sensation,  they  have  to  be  brought  within 
consciousness — ^to  find  a  home  in  the  understanding — as  ideas 
of  sensation.  Meanwhile  the  consideration  returns  that  after 

'  Of.  II.  chap.  i.  sees.  11  and  14,  with  of  oonsdouBneBB,  with  the  doctrine  im^ 

u.  chap,  zxvii.  sec.  9.    It  is  difficult  plied  in  Book  n.  chap.  i.  sec  11,  that 

to  see  what  ingenuity  could  reconcile  the  the  waking  Socrates  is  the  same  penoa 

doctrine  stat^  in  Book  il  cha^.  xxvii.  with  Socrates  asleep,  «.«.  (according  to 

■ec.  9,  that  personal  identity  is  identity  Locke)  not  conscious  at  all. 


THIXKINa-SELF  CAUSES  SEARCH  FOR  SUBSTANCE.      113 

all  the  ^  thinking  thing '  contributes  something  to  that  which  'Matter' 
it  thinks  aboat ;  and,  this  once  admitted,  it  is  as  impossible  have  Uie 
to  limit  its  work  on  one  side  as  that  of  the  outer  thing  on  same 
the  other.   Each  usurps  the  place  of  its  opposite.   Thus  with  J^^S^'" 
Locke  the  understanding  produces  e£Pect8  on  itself,  but  the  sciousneKs. 
product  is  one  and  the  same  '  perception '  otherwise  treated 
as  an  effect  of  the  outer  world.     One  and  the  same  self-con- 
sciousness, in  short,^  involving  the  correlation  of  subject  and 
object,  becomes  the  result  of  two  separate  ^  things,'  each ' 
exclusive  of  the  other,  into  which  the  opposite  poles  of  this 
relation  have  been  converted — the  extended  thing  or  *  body  ' 
on  the  one  side,  and  the  thinking  thing  or  '  mind '  on  the 
other. 

133.  To  each  of  these  supposed  ^  things '  thought  transfers  Difficulties 
its  own  unity  and  self-containedness,  and  thereupon  finds  itself  JJ  ^J^^pJb!^ 
in  new  difiiculties.   These,  so  far  as  they  concern  the  outward  ing  reality 
thing,  have  already  been  suflBiciently  noticed.     We  have  seen  J?_"°^' 
how  the  single  seUT-contained  thing  on  the  one  hand  attenu-  matter,  re- 
ates  itself  to  the  bare  atom,  presented  in  a  moment  of  time,  *PP«^  « 
which  in  its  exclusiveness  is  actually  nothing  :•  how,  on  the  w^nc* 
other,  it  spreads  itself,  as  everything  which  for  one  moment  as  mind. 
we  regard  as   independent  turns  out  in  the  next  to  be  a 
^retainer'  to  something  else,  into  a  series  that  cannot  be 
summed.*    A  like  consequence  follows  when  the  individual 
man,  conceiving  of  the  thought,  which  is  not  mine  but  me, 
and  which  is  no  less  the  world  without  which  I  am  not  I,  as  a 
thinking  thing  within  him,  limited  by  the  limitations  of  his 
animal  nature,  seeks  in  this  thinking  thing,  exclusive  of  other 
things,  that  unit^  and  self-containedness,  which  only  belong 
to  the  universal  ^  I.'     He  finds  that  he  '  thinks  not  always ;' 
that  during  a  fourth  part  of  his  time  he  neither  thinks  nor 
perceives  at  all;   and  that  even  in  his  waking  hours  his 
consciousness  consists  of  a  succession  of  separate  feelings, 
whose  recurrence  he  cannot  command/   Thought  being  thus 
broken  and  dependent,  substantiality  is  not  to  be  found  in  it. 
It  is  next  sought  in  the  ^  thing '  of  which  thought  is  an  occa- 
sional operation — a  thing  of  which  it  may  readily  be  admitted 
that  its  nature  cannot  be  known,^  since  it  has  no  nature,  being 
merely  that  which  remains  of  the  thinking  thing  upon  ab- 

'  Fcr  the  eqiuYalenoe  of  perception  following. 

with  aeif-coneeioiiBneas  in  Locke,  aee  '  See  abore,  paragraph  126. 

atiOTe,  paragraph  24,  et  infht.  •  Locke,  Eeeay  ii.  chap.  i.  sec  10,  ete. 

*  See  aboT^  paragraph  94  and  the  *  Book  ii.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  29,  ettf. 


VOL.  I.  I 


^*^     CFTHF  •       A 

rNIVERSITTj 


114  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

straction  of  its  sole  determination.  It  is  in  principle  nothing 
else  than  the  supposed  basis  of  sensible  qualities  remaining 
after  these  have  been  abstracted — the  *  parcel  of  matter' 
which  has  no  essence — with  which  accordingly  Locke  some* 
times  himself  tends  to  identify  it.'  But  meanwhile,  behind 
this  unknown  substance,  whether  of  spirit  or  of  body,  the 
self-consciousness,  which  has  been  treated  as  its  occasional 
unessential  operation,  re-asserts  itself  as  the  self  which  claims 
'  both  body  and  spirit,  the  immaterial  no  less  than  the  material 
substance,  as  its  own,  and  throughout  whatever  diversity  in 
these  maintains  its  own  identity. 
We  think  134.  Just,  then,  as  Locke's  conception  of  outward  reality 
notalways,  grows  under  his  hands  into  a  conception  of  nature  as  a  system 
thought  of  relations  which  breaks  through  the  limitations  of  reality 
constitutes  as  constituted  by  mere  ivdividua^  so  it  is  with  the  self,  as  he 
conceived  it.  It  is  not  a  simple  idea.  It  is  not  one  of  the 
train  that  is  for  ever  passing,  ^one  going  and  another  coming,' 
for  it  looks  on  this  succession  as  that  which  it  experiences, 
being  itself  the  same  throughout  the  successive  differences 
(Book  II.  chap.  vii.  sec.  9,  and  chap.  zxviL  sec.  9).  As  little 
can  it  be  adjusted  to  any  of  the  conditions  of  real  ^  things,' 
thinking  or  unthinking,  which  he  ordinarily  recognises.  It 
has  no  '  particularity  in  space  and  time.'  That  which  is  past 
in  *  reality'  is  to  it  present.  It  is  *  in  its  nature  indifferent 
to  any  parcel  of  matter.'  It  is  the  same  with  itself  yesterday 
and  to-day,  here  and  there.  That '  with  which  its  conscious- 
ness can  join  itself  is  one  self  with  it,'  and  it  can  so  join  itself 
with  substances  apart  in  space  and  remote  in  time  (Book  ii. 
chap,  xxvii.  sees.  9, 13, 14, 17).  For  speaking  of  it  as  eternal, 
indeed,  we  could  find  no  warrant  in  Locke.  He  does  not  so 
clearly  distinguish  it  from  the  *  thinking  thing '  supposed  to 
be  within  each  man,  that  has  '  had  its  determinate  time  and 
place  of  beginning  to  exist,  relation  to  which  determines  its 
identity  so  long  as  it  exists'  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxvii.  sec.  2). 
Hence  he  supposed  an  actual  limit  to  the  past  which  it  could 
make  present— a  limit  seemingly  fixed  for  each  man  at  the 
farthest  by  the  date  of  his  birth — though  he  talks  vaguely  of 
the  possibility  of  its  range  being  extended  (Book  ii.  chap, 
xxvii.  sec.  16).  In  the  discussion  of  personal  identity,  how- 
ever, the  distinction  gradually  forces  itself  upon  him,  and  he 
at  last  expressly  says  (sec.  16),  that  if  the  same  Socrates^ 

>  See  above,  paragraph  106,  near  the  end. 


TET  NOT  ITSELF  A  SUBSTANCE.  115 

sleepuig  and  waking,  do  not  partake  of  the  same  conscious- 
ness (as  according  to  Book  ii.  chap.  i.  sec.  11  he  certainly 
does  not),  ^  Socrates  sleeping  and  waking  is  not  the  same 
person;'  whereas  the  ^thinking  thing' — the  substance  of 
which  consciousness  is  apower  sometimes  exercised,  sometimes 
not — ^is  the  same  in  the  sleeping  as  in  the  waking  Socrates. 
This  is  a  pregnant  admission,  but  it  brings  nothing  to  the 
birth  in  Locke  himself.  The  inference  which  it  suggests  to 
his  reader,  that  a  self  which  does  not  slumber  or  sleep  is  not 
one  which  is  bom  or  dies,  does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to 
him.  Taking  for  his  method  the  imaginary  process  of 
'looking  into  his  own  breast,'  instead  of  the  analysis  of 
knowledge  and  morality,  he  could  not  find  the  eternal  self 
which  knowledge  and  morality  pre-suppose,  but  only  the  con- 
tradiction of  a  person  whose  consciousness  is  not  the  same 
for  two  moments  together,  and  ofken  ceases  altogether,  but 
who  yet,  in  virtue  of  an  identity  of  this  very  consciousness, 
is  the  same  in  childhood  and  in  old  ago. 

135.  Here  as  elsewhere  we  have  to  be  thankful  that  the  Locke 
contradiction  had  not  been  brought  home  so  strongly  to  5?'**^®', 
Locke  as  to  make  him  seek  the  suppression  of  either  of  its  thesA  con- 
altematives.    He  was  aware  neither  of  the  burden  which  his  *!^*®" 
philosophy  tended  to  put  upon  the  self  which  *  can  consider  attempts 
itself  as  itself  in  diflFerent  times  and  places ' — the  burden  of  *<>  ®^**r" 
replacing  the  stable  world,  when  *  the  new  way  of  ideas'  should  **™*    *°^ 
have  resolved  the  outward  thing  into  a  succession  of  feelings 
— nor  of  the  hopelessness  of  such  a  burden  being  borne  by  a 
*  perishing '  consciousness,  ^  of  which  no  two  parts  exist  to- 
gether, but  follow  each  other  in  succession.'*     When  he 
'  looked  into  himself,'  he  found  consciousness  to  consist  in 
the  succession  of  ideas,  '  one  coming  and  another  going :'  he 
also  found  that  *  consciousness  alone  makes  what  we  call  self,' 
and  that  he  was  the  same  self  at  any  different  points  in  the 
succession.     He  noted  the  two  ^  facts  of  consciousness '  at 
different  stages  of  his  enquiry,  and  was  apparently  not  struck 
by  their  contradiction.     He  could  describe  them  both,  and 
whatever  he  could  describe  seemed  to  him  to  be  explained. 

■  Cf.  n.  chsp.  nr.  sec.  32— 'by  ob-  Buccession,  we  get  the  ideA  of  duration* 

■eiriog  what  panes  in  our  minds,  how  — with  chap.  xy.  sec.  12.     'I>uration 

our  idms  there  in  train  constantly  some  is  the  idea  we  have  of  perishing  distance, 

Taniah  and  others  begin  to  appear,  we  of  which  no  two  parts  exist  together,  bnt 

eome  by  the  idea  of  sneoession ;  and  by  follow  each  other  in  snocession.' 
obserring  a  distance  in  the  parts  of  this 

t3 


116 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Is  the  idea 
of  God 
possible  to 
a  con- 
sciousness 
given  in 
time? 


LA)cke*s 
Mcount  of 
this  idea. 


Hence  they  did  not  suggest  to  him  any  question  either  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  observed  object  or  as  to  the  possibility 
of  observing  it,  such  as  might  have  diverted  philosophy  from 
the  method  of  self-observation.  He  left  them  side  by  side, 
and,  far  from  disguising  either,  put  alongside  of  them  another 
fact — the  presence  among  the  perpetually  perishing  ideas  of 
that  of  a  consciousness  identical  with  itself,  not  merely  in 
different  times  and  places,  but  in  all  times  and  places.  Such 
an  idea,  under  the  designation  of  an  eternal  wise  Being,  he 
was  ^  sure  he  had '  (Book  ii.  chap.  rvii.  sec.  14). 

136.  The  remark  will  at  once  occur  that  the  question  con- 
cerning the  relation  between  our  consciousness,  as  in  sac- 
cession,  and  the  idea  of  God,  is  essentially  different  from  that 
concerning  the  relation  between  this  consciousness  and  the 
self  identical  throughout  it,  inasmuch  as  the  relation  in  the 
one  case  is  between  a  fact  and  an  idea,  in  the  other  between 
conflicting  facts.  The  identity  of  the  self,  which  Locke 
asserts,  is  one  of  *  real  being,'  and  this  is  found  to  lie  in  con- 
sciousness, in  apparent  conflict  with  the  fact  thafc  conscious- 
ness is  a  succession,  of  which  ^  no  two  parts  exist  together.' 
There  is  no  such  conflict,  it  will  be  said,  between  the  idea  of 
a  conscious  being,  who  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  for 
ever — the  correspondence  to  which  of  any  reality  is  a  farther 
question — and  the/oc^  of  our  consciousness  being  in  succes- 
sion. Allowing  for  the  moment  the  validity  of  this  dis- 
tinction, we  will  consider  first  the  difficulties  that  attach  to 
Locke's  account  of  the  idea  of  God,  as  an  idea. 

137.  This  idea,  with  him,  is  a  *  complex  idea  of  substance.' 
It  is  the  idea  each  man  has  of  the  ^  thinking  thing  within 
him,  enlarged  to  infinity.'  It  is  beset  then  in  the  first  place 
with  all  the  difficidties  which  we  have  found  to  belong  to  his 
doctrine  of  substance  generally  and  of  the  thinking  substance 
in  particular.*  These  need  not  be  recalled  in  detail.  When 
God  is  the  thinking  substance  they  become  more  obvious. 
It  is  the  antithesis  to  ^  material  substance,'  as  the  source  of 
ideas  of  sensation,  that  alone  with  Locke  gives  a  meaning  to 
*  thinking  substance,'  as  the  source  of  ideas  of  reflection  : 
and  if,  as  we  have  seen,  the  antithesis  is  untenable  when  it 
is  merely  the  source  of  human  ideas  that  is  in  question,  much 
more  must  it  be  so  in  regard  to  God,  to  whom  any  opposition 
of  material  substance  must  be  a  limitation  of  his  perfect 

*  See  above,  paragraph  35  and  the  following,  and  127  and  the  following. 


roEA  OF  GOD.  117 

nature.  Of  the  generic  element  in  the  abof  e  definition,  then, 
no  more  need  here  be  said.  It  is  the  qualification  of  ^  en- 
largement to  infinity/  by  which  the  idea  of  man  as  a  thinking 
substance  is  represented  as  becoming  the  idea  of  God,  that 
is  the  special  difficulty  now  before  us.  Of  this  Locke  writes 
as  follows : — '  The  complex  idea  we  have  of  God  is  made  up 
of  the  simple  ones  we  receive  from  refiection.  If  I  find  that 
I  know  some  few  things,  and  some  of  them,  or  all  perhaps, 
imperfectly,  I  can  frame  an  idea  of  knowing  twice  as  many : 
which  I  can  double  again  as  often  as  I  can  add  to  number, 
and  thus  enlarge  my  ideas  of  knowledge  by  extending  its 
comprehension  to  all  things  existing  or  possible.  The  same 
I  -can  do  of  knowing  them  more  perfectly,  i.e.  all  their  quali- 
ties, powers,  causes,  consequences,  and  relations ;  and  thus 
£rame  the  idea  of  infinite  or  boundless  knowledge.  The  same 
also  may  be  done  of  power  till  we  come  to  that  we  call  infi- 
nite ;  and  also  of  the  duration  of  existence  without  beginning 
or  end ;  and  so  frame  the  idea  of  an  eternal  being.  .  .  All 
which  is  done  by  enlarging  the  simple  ideas  we  have  taken 
from  the  operation  of  our  own  minds  by  reflection,  or  by  our 
senses  from  exterior  things,  to  that  vastness  to  which  infinity 
can  extend  them.  For  it  is  infinity  which  joined  to  our  ideas 
of  existence,  power,  knowledge,  &c.,  makes  that  complex  idea 
whereby  we  represent  to  ourselves  the  supreme  being '  (Book 
n.  chap,  xxiii.  sec.  38 — 85).  What  is  meant  by  this  ^joining 
of  infinity '  to  our  ideas  ? 

188.  *rinite  and  infinite,*  says  Locke,  *  are  looked  upon  'Infinity; 
by  the  mind  as  the  modes  of  quantity,  and  are  to  be  attri-  J^L^ke^ 
buted  primarily  only  to  those  things  that  have  parts  and  are  account  of 
capable  of  increase  by  the  addition  of  any  the  least  part '  appHoabie 
(Book  n.  chap.  ivii.  sec.   1).     Such  are  *  duration  and  ex-  to  God,  if 
pansion.'    The  applicability  then  of  the  term  *  infinite  *  in  ?^^" 
its  proper  sense  to  God  implies  that  he  has  expansion  or 
duration ;  and  it  is  characteristic  of  Locke  that  though  he 
was  dear  about  the  divisibility  of  expansion  and  duration,  as 
the  above  passage  shows,  he  has  no  scruple  about  speaking 
of  them  as  attributes  of  God,  of  whom  as  beiug  ^  in  his  own 
essence  simple  and  uncompounded '  he  would  never  have 
spoken  as  ^  having  parts.'     *  Duration  is  the  idea  we  have  of 
perishing  distance,  of  which  no  parts  exist  together  but  foUow 
each  other  in  succession ;  as  expansion  is  the  idea  of  lasting 


118  GENERAL  INTRODUOTION. 

distaiuse,  all  whose  parts  exist  together.'  Yet  of  duration 
and  expansion,  thus  defined,  he  says  that '  in  their  fnll  ex- 
tent '  (i.  e.  as  seyerallj  *  eternity  and  immensity ')  *  they 
belong  only  to  the  Deity '  (Book  ii.  chap.  xv.  sees.  8  and  12). 

*  A  fall  extent '  of  them,  however,  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case 
impossible.  With  a  last  moment  duration  would  cease  to  be 
duration ;  without  another  space  beyond  it  space  woulc^i  not 
be  space.  Lodke  is  quite  aware  of  this.  When  his  concep- 
tion of  infinity  is  not  embarrassed  by  reference  to  God,  it 
is  simply  that  of  unlimited  '  addibility ' — a  juxta-position  of 
space  to  space,  a  succession  of  time  upon  time,  to  which  we 
can  suppose  no  Umit  so  long  as  we  consider  space  and  time 

*  as  having  parts,  and  thus  capable  of  increase  by  the  addi- 
tion of  parts,'  and  which  therefore  excludes  the  very  possi- 
bility of  a  totality  or  *full  extent*  (Book  ii.  chap,  xvi,  sec.  8, 
and  xvii.  sec.  13).  The  question,  then,  whether  infinity  of 
expansion  and  duration  in  this,  its  only  proper,  sense  can  be 
predicated  of  the  perfect  God,  has  only  to  be  asked  in  order 
to  be  answered  in  the  negative.  Nor  do  we  mend  the  matter 
if,  instead  of  ascribing  such  infinity  to  God,  we  substitute 
another  phrase  of  Locke's,  and  say  that  He  '  tills  eternity 
and  immensity'  (Book  ii.  chap.  xv.  sec.  8).  Put  for  eternity 
and  immensity  their  proper  equivalents  according  to  Locke, 
viz.  unlimited  ^  addibility '  of  times  and  spaces,  and  the 
essential  unmeaningness  of  the  phrase  becomes  apparent. 

Can  it  be  139.  Li  regard  to  any  other  attributes  of  God  than  those 
JPP^;^^  of  his  duration  and  expansion,*  Locke  admits  that  the  term 
stiveiy  *?  *  infinite '  is  applied  •  figuratively '  (Book  n.  chap,  xvii.  sec. 
1).  ^When  we  call  them  (e.  9.  His  power,  wisdom,  and 
goodness)  infinite,  we  have  no  other  idea  of  this  infinity 
but  what  carries  with  it  some  refiection  on,  or  intimation  of, 
that  number  or  extent  of  the  acts  or  objects  of  God's  wisdom, 
&c.,  which  can  never  be  supposed  so  great  or  so  many  which 
these  attributes  will  not  always  surmount,  let  us  multiply 
them  in  our  thoughts  as  far  as  we  can  with  all  the  infinity 
of  endless  number.'  What  determination,  then,  according  to 
this  passage,  of  our  conception  of  God's  goodness  is  repre- 

*  In  the  passages  referred  to,  Locke  ascri^on  of  expansion  to  God,  he  taeitly 

speaks  of  *  daratioD  and  ubiquity*    The  substitates  for  it  *  ubiquity,'   a  term 

{xroper  counterpart,  howerer,  df '  dura-  which  does  not  match  *  duration/  and 

tion*  according  to  him  is  *  expansion ' —  can  only  mean  presence  throughout  the 

this  being  to  space  what  duration  is  loAofoof  expansion,  presence  throughout 

to   time.     Under  the  embarrassmenti  the  whole  of  that  which  does  not  admit 

however,  wliicli  nocessarilv  attends  the  of  a  whole. 


LOCKE'S  NOTION  OF  INFTNTTY.  119 

aented  by  calling  it  infinite  ?  Simply  its  relation  to  a  nnmber  ^P^^'J*' 
of  acts  and  objects  of  which  the  sum  can  always  be  increased,  ^ite  num- 
and  which,  just  for  that  reason,  cannot  represent  the  perfect  ber  of 
God.     Is  it  then,  it  may  be  asked,  of  mere  perversity  that        ^ 
when  thinking  of  Grod  under  attributes  that  are  not  quanti- 
tative, and  therefore  do  not  carry  with  them  the  necessity  of 
incompleteness,  we  yet  go  out  of  our  way  by  this  epithet  *  in- 
finite '  to  subject  them  to  the  conditions  of  quantity  and  its 
^  progressus  ad  infinitum  9  ' 

140.  Betaining  Locke's  point  of  view,  our  answer  of  course  An  act, 
must  be  that  our  ideas  of  the  Divine  attributes,  being  naturi,"** 
primarily  our  own  ideas  of  reflection,  are  either  ideas  of  the  remains  w. 
single  successive  acts  that  constitute  our  inward  experience  ^^^'^ 
or  formed  from  these  by  abstraction  and  combination.  In  peaud. 
parts  our  experience  is  given,  in  parts  only  can  we  recall  it. 
Our  complex  or  abstract  ideas  are  symbols  which  only  take 
a  meaning  so  far  as  we  resolve  them  into  the  detached  im- 
pressions which  in  the  sum  they  represent,  or  recall  the 
objects,  each  with  its  own  before  and  after,  from  which  they 
were  originally  taken.  So  it  is  with  the  ideas  of  wisdom, 
power,  and  goodness,  which  from  ourselves  we  transfer  to 
God.  They  represent  an  experience  given  in  succession  and 
piece-meal — a  numerable  series  of  acts  and  events,  which  like 
every  other  number  is  already  infinite  in  the  only  sense  of 
the  word  of  which  Locke  can  give  a  clear  account,  as  suscep- 
tible of  indefinite  repetition  (Book  ii.  chap.  vi.  sec.  8.)  When 
we  *join  infinity'  to  these  ideas,  then,  unless  some  other 
meaning  is  given  to  infinity,  we  merely  state  explicitly  what 
was  originally  predicable  of  the  experience  they  embody. 
Nor  will  it  avaU  us  much  to  shift  the  meaning  of  infinite, 
as  Locke  does  when  he  applies  it  to  the  divine  attributes, 
from  that  of  indefinite  *  addibility '  to  that  of  exceeding  any 
sum  which  indefinite  multiplication  can  yield  us.  Let  us 
suppose  an  act  of  consciousness,  from  which  we  have  taken 
an  abstract  idea  of  an  attribute — say  of  wisdom — to  be  a 
million  times  repeated ;  our  idea  of  the  attribute  will  not 
vary  with  the  repetition.  Nor  if,  having  supposed  a  limit 
to  the  repetition^  we  then  suppose  the  act  indefinitely  re- 
peated beyond  this  limit  and  accordingly  speak  of  the  attri- 
bute as  infinite,  will  our  idea  of  the  attribute  vary  at  all 
from  what  it  was  to  begin  with.  Its  content  will  be  the  same. 
There  will  be  nothing  to  be  said  of  it  which  could  not  have 


190 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


i3^od  only 
infinite  m 
a  sense  in 
which  time 
is  not  infi- 
nite, and 
which 
Locke 
could  not 
Teoognize 


been  said  of  the  experience  &om  which  it  was  originallj 
abstracted,  and  of  which  the  essential  characteristic — ^that 
it  is  one  of  a  series  of  eyents  of  which  no  two  can  be  present 
together  -  is  incompatible  with  divine  perfection. 

141.  It  appears  then  that  it  is  the  subjection  of  our  ex- 
perience to  tiie  form  of  time  which  unfits  the  ideas  derived 
from  it  for  any  combination  into  an  idea  of  God ;  nor  by 
being  ^  joined  with  an  infinity/  which  itself  merely  means 
the  absence  of  limit  to  succession  in  time,  is  their  unfitness 
in  any  way  modified.  On  the  contrary,  by  such  conjunction 
from  being  latent  it  becomes  patent.  In  one  important 
passage  Locke  becomes  so  far  aware  of  this  that,  though 
continuing  to  ascribe  infinite  duration  to  God,  he  does  it 
under  qualifications  inconsistent  with  the  very  notion  of 
duration.  *  Though  we  cannot  conceive  any  duration  with- 
out succession,  nor  put  it  together  in  our  thoughts  that  any 
being  does  now  exist  to-morrow  or  possess  at  onoe  more  than 
the  present  moment  of  duration ;  yet  we  can  conceive  the 
eternal  duration  of  the  Almighty  far  different  from  that  of 
man,  or  any  other  finite  being  t  because  man  comprehends 
not  in  his  knowledge  or  power  all  past  and  future  things 
....  what  is  once  past  he  can  never  recall,  and  what 
is  yet  to  come  he  cannot  make  present.  .  .  .  God's  infinite 
duration  being  accompanied  with  infinite  knowledge  and 
power,  he  sees  all  things  past  and  to  come '  (Book  ii.  chap. 
XV.  sec  12).  It  is  clear  that  in  this  passage  ^infinite' 
changes  its  meaning ;  that  it  is  used  in  one  sense — ^the 
proper  sense  according  to  Locke — when  applied  to  dura- 
tion, and  in  some  wholly  different  sense,  not  a  figurative 
one  derived  from  the  former,  when  applied  to  knowledge 
and  power ;  and  that  the  infinite  duration  of  Grod,  as  '  ac- 
companied by  infinite  power  and  knowledge,'  is  no  longer  in 
any  intelligible  sense  duration  at  all.  It  is  no  longer  '  the 
idea  we  have  of  perishing  distance,'  derived  from  our  fleeting 
consciousness  in  which  ^  what  is  once  past  can  never  be  re-P 
called,'  but  the  attribute  of  a  consciousness  of  which,  if  it  is 
to  be  described  in  terms  of  time  at  all,  in  virtue  of  its  ^  see- 
ing all  things  past  and  to  come '  at  once,  it  can  only  be 
said  that  it  ^  does  now  exist  to-morrow.'  If  it  be  asked. 
What  meaning  can  we  have  in  speaking  of  such  a  conscious- 
ness? into  what  simple  ideas  can  it  be  resolved  when 
all  our  ideas  are  determined  by  a  before  and  after  ? — the 


HOW  CAN  THE  INFINITE  BE  KNOWN?  121 

answer  must  be,  Jnst  as  much  or  as  little  meaning  as  we 
have  when,  in  like  contradiction  to  the  successive  presenta- 
tion of  ideas,  we  speak  of  a  self,  constituted  by  conscious- 
nessy  as  identical  with  itself  throughout  the  years  of  our 
Ufe. 

142.  A  more  positive  answer  it  is  not  our  present  business  —the  a 


to  give.  Our  concern  is  to  show  that  *  eternity  and  im-  whiSi'Sie 
mensity,'  according  to  any  meaning  that  Locke  recognises,  Mlfi> 
or  that  the  observation  of  our  ideas  could  justify,  do  not  '°  °***' 
express  any  conception  that  can  carry  us  beyond  the  per- 
petual incompleteness  of  our  experience;  but  that  in  his 
doctrine  of  personal  identity  he  does  admit  a  conception 
which  no  observation  of  our  ideas  of  reflection — since  these 
are  in  succession  and  could  not  be  observed  if  they  were  not 
— can  account  for ;  and  that  it  is  just  this  conception,  the 
conception  of  a  constant  presence  of  consciousness  to  itself 
incompatible  with  conditions  of  space  and  time,  that  can 
alone  give  such  meaning  to  ^  eternal  and  infinite '  as  can 
render  them  significant  epithets  of  God.  Such  a  conception 
(we  say  it  with  respect)  Locke  admits  when  it  is  wanted 
without  knowing  it  It  must  indeed  always  underlie  the 
idea  of  €rod,  however  alien  to  it  may  be  attempted  adapta- 
tions of  the  other  *  infinite  * — the  'progresmis  ad  indefinitam  in 
space  and  time — by  which,  as  with  Locke,  the  idea  is  ex- 
plained. But  it  is  one  for  which  the  psychological  method 
of  observing  what  happens  in  oneself  cannot  account,  and. 
which  therefore  this  method,  just  so  far  as  it  is  thoroughly 
carried  out»  must  tend  to  discard.  That  which  happens, 
whether  we  reckon  it  an  inward  or  an  outward,  a  physical 
or  a  psychical  event — and  nothing  but  an  event  can,  pro- 
perly speaking,  be  observed — is  as  such  in  time.  But  the 
presence  of  consciousness  to  itself,  though,  as  the  true 
'  punctum  stans,' '  it  is  the  condition  of  the  observation  of 
events  in  time,  is  not  such  an  event  itself.  In  the  ordinary 
and  proper  sense  of  ^  fact,'  it  is  not  a  &ct  at  all,  nor  yet  a 
possible  abstraction  from  facts.  To  the  method,  then,  which 
deals  with  phrases  about  the  mind  by  ascertaining  the 
observable  'mental  phenomena'  which  they  represent,  it 
must  remain  a  mere  phrase,  to  be  explained  as  the  offspring 
of  other  phrases  whose  real  import  has  been  misunderstood. 

*  Lo^a,  £iMj  n.  efaap.  vnL  tee.  IS. 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


How  do  I 

know  mv 
own  real 
ezifitence? 
^-Locke's 
answer. 


It  can  only  recover  a  significance  wlien  this  method,  as  with 
Hume,  has  done  its  worst,  and  is  found  to  leave  the  i)osBi- 
bility  of  knowledge,  without  such  *  punctum  stans,'  still 
unaccounted  for. 

143.  We  have  finally  to  notice  the  way  in  which  Locke 
maintains  our  knowledge  of  the  '  real  existence '  of  thinking 
substance,  both  as  that  which  'we  call  our  mind,'  and  as 
God.  Of  the  former  first.  *  Experience  convinces  us  that 
we  have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  our  own  existence. .  .  . 
If  I  know  I  feel  pain,  it  is  evident  I  have  as  certain  percep- 
tion of  my  own  existence  as  of  the  pain  I  feeL  If  I  know  I 
doubt,  I  have  as  certain  perception  of  the  existence  of  the 
thing  doubting  as  of  that  thought  which  I  call  doubt  *  (Book 
rv.  chap.  ix.  sec.  3).  Upon  this  the  remark  must  occur  that 
the  existence  of  a  painful  feeling  is  one  thing ;  the  existence 
of  a  permanent  subject,  remaining  the  same  with  itself,  when 
the  feeling  is  over,  and  through  the  succession  of  other 
feelings,  quite  another.  The  latter  is  what  is  meant  by 
my  own  existence,  of  which  undoubtedly  there  is  a  ^  certain 
perception,'  if  the  feeling  of  pain  has  become  the  '  know- 
ledge that  I  feel  pain,'  and  if  by  the  ^  I '  is  understood  such  a 
permanent  subject.  That  the  feeling,  as '  simple  idea,'  is  taken 
to  begin  with  by  Locke  for  the  knowledge  that  I  feel  some- 
thing, we  have  sufBciently  seen.^  Just  as,  in  virtue  of  this 
conversion,  it  gives  us  *  assurance '  of  the  real  existence  of 
the  outer  thing  or  material  substance  on  the  one  side,  so  of 
the  thinking  substance  on  the  other.  It  carries  with  it  the 
certainty  at  once  that  I  have  a  feeling,  and  that  something 
makes  me  feel.  But  whereas,  after  the  conversion  of  feeling 
into  a  felt  thing  has  been  tiiroughout  assumed — as  indeed 
otherwise  feeling  could  not  be  spoken  of — a  further  question 
is  raised,  which  causes  much  embarrassment,  as  to  the  real 
existence  of  such  thing ;  on  the  contrary,  the  reference  of  the 
feeling  to  the  thinking  thing  is  taken  as  carrying  with  it  the 
real  existence  of  such  thing.  The  question  whether  it  really 
exists  or  no  is  only  once  raised,  and  then  summarily  settled 
by  the  sentence  we  have  quoted,  while  the  reality  whether 
of  existence  or  of  essence  on  the  part  of  the  outward  thing,  as 
we  have  found  to  our  cost,  is  the  main  burden  of  the  Third 
and  Fourth  Books. 


'  See  above,  paragmphs  26  and  following,  and  59  and  following. 


IDEAS  OF  SELF  AND  GOD  ALSO  REAL,  123 

144,  In  principle,  indeed,  the  answer  to  both  questions,  as  It  ^nnot 
given  by  Locke,  is  the  same :  for  the  reasons  which  he  alleges  consis- 
for  being  assured  of  the  ^existence  of  a  thing  without  us  teutiywith 
corresponding  to  the  idea  of  sensation  *  reduce  themselves,  as  doctrine  o( 
we  have  seen,  to  the  reiteration  of  that  reference  of  the  idea  real  exis- 
to  a  thing,  which  according  to  him  is  originallj  involved  in  ^^^' 

it,  and  which  is  but  the  correlative  of  its  reference  to  a  sub- 
ject. This,  however,  is  what  he  was  not  himself  aware  of. 
To  him  the  outer  and  the  inner  substance  were  separate  and 
independent  things,  for  each  of  which  the  question  of  real 
existence  had  to  be  separately  settled.  To  us,  according  to 
the  view  already  indicated,  it  is  the  presence  of  self-conscious- 
ness, or  thought  as  an  object-to-itself,  to  feeling  that  converts 
it  into  a  relation  between  feeling  thing  and  felt  thing,  between 
'  cogitative  and  incogitative  substance.'  The  source  of  sub- 
stantiation upon  each  side  being  the  same,  the  question  as  to 
the  real  existence  of  either  substance  must  be  the  same,  and 
equally  so  the  answer  to  it.  It  is  an  answer  that  must  be 
preceded  by  a  counter  question. — ^Does  real  existence  mean 
existence  independent  of  thought  ?  To  suppose  such  existence 
is  to  suppose  an  impossibility — one  which  is  not  the  less  i^ 
though  the  existence  be  supposed  material,  if  'material' 
means  in  '  space  '  and  space  itself  is  a  relation  constituted 
by  the  mind,  '  bringing  things  to  and  setting  them  by  one  an- 
other.' Yet  is  the  supposition  itself  but  a  mode  of  the  logical 
substantiation  we  have  explained,  followed  by  an  imaginary 
abstraction  of  the  work  of  the  mind  from  this,  its  own  crea- 
tion. Does  real  existence  mean  a  possible  feeling?  If  so,  it 
is  as  clear  that  what  converts  feeling  into  a  relation  between 
felt  thing  and  feeling  subject  cannot  in  this  sense  be  real,  as 
it  is  that  without  such  conversion  no  distinction  between 
real  aud  fantastic  would  be  possible.  Does  it,  finally,  mean 
individuality,  in  such  a  sense  that  unless  I  can  say  this  or 
that  is  substance,  thinking  or  material,  substance  does  not 
really  exist  9  If  it  does,  the  answer  is  that  substance,  being 
constituted  by  a  relation  by  which  self-conscious  thought  is 
for  ever  determining  feelings,  and  which  every  predication 
represents,  cannot  be  identified  with  any  'this  or  that,' 
though  without  it  there  could  be  no  *  this  or  that '  at  all. 

145.  We  have  already  found  that  Locke  accepts  each  of  ignores 
the  above  as  determinations  of  real  existence,  and  that,  though  this  in 
in  spite  of  them  he  labours  to  maintain  the  real  existence  of  [hTsp"?.** 


1S4  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

outward  things,  he  is  so  far  faithful  to  them  as  to  declare 
real  essence  unknowable.  In  answering  the  question  as  to 
*  his  own  existence '  he  wholly  ignores  them.  He  does  not 
ask  how  the  real  existence  of  the  thinking  Ego  sorts  with  his 
ordinary  doctrine  that  the  real  is  what  would  be  in  the  world 
whether  there  were  a  mind  or  no ;  or  its  real  identity,  present 
throughout  the  particulars  of  experience,  with  his  ordinary 
doctrine  of  the  fictitiousness  of  *  generals.'  A  real  existence 
of  the  mind,  however,  founded  on  the  logical  necessity  of 
substantiation,  rests  on  a  shifting  basis,  so  long  as  by  the 
mind  is  understood  a  thinking  thing,  different  in  each  man, 
to  which  his  inner  experience  is  referred  as  accidents  to  a 
substance.  The  same  law  of  thought  which  compels  such 
reference  requires  that  the  thinking  thing  in  its  turn,  as  that 
which  is  born  grows  and  dies,  be  referred  as  an  accident  to 
some  ulterior  substance.  ^A  fever  or  fall  may  take  away  my 
reason  or  memory,  or  both ;  and  an  apoplexy  leave  neither 
sense  nor  understanding,  no,  nor  life.'  ^  Just  as  each  outer 
thing  turns  out  to  be  a  ^  retainer  to  something  else,'  so  is  it 
with  the  inner  thing.  Such  a  dependent  being  cannot  be  an 
ultimate  substance  ;  nor  can  any  natural  agents  to  which  we 
may  trace  its  dependence  really  be  so  either.  The  logical 
necessity  of  further  substantiation  would  affect  them  equally, 
appearing  in  the  supposition  of  an  unknown  something 
beyond,  which  makes  them  what  they  are.  It  is  under  such 
logical  necessity  that  Locke,  in  regard  to  all  the  substances 
which  he  commonly  speaks  of  as  ultimate  —  God,  spirit^ 
body — ^from  time  to  time  gives  warning  of  something  still 
ulterior  and  unknowable,  whether  under  the  designation  of 
substance  or  real  essence  (Book  ii.  chap,  xxiii.  sees.  80  and 
86).  If,  then,  it  will  be  said,  substance  is  but  the  constantly- 
shifting  result  of  a  necessity  of  thought — so  shifting  that 
there  is  nothing  of  which  we  can  finally  say,  ^  This  is  sub- 
stance, not  accident  * — there  can  be  no  evidence  of  the  *  real 
existence '  of  a  permanent  Ego  in  the  necessary  substantiation 
therein  of  my  inner  experience. 
Sense  in  146.  The  first  result  of  such  a  consideration  in  a  reader  of 

Mtf^i  ^^    Locke  will  naturally  be  an  attempt  to  treat  the  inner  syn- 
iniijnftL    thesis  as  a  fiction  of  thought  or  figure  of  speech,  and  to 
confine  real  existence  to  single  feelings  in  the  moments  of 
their  occurrence.     This,  it  will  seem,  is  to  be  faithful  to 

*  Locko,  Book  iii.  chap.  yi.  lec  4. 


DEMONSTRATION  OF  GOD'S  EXISTENCE.  125 

Locke's  own  clearer  mind,  as  it  frequently  emerges  from  the 
still-retoming  cloud  of  scliolasticism.  The  final  result  will 
rather  be  the  discovery  that  the  single  feeling  is  nothing  rea.!, 
but  that  the  synthesis  of  appearances,  which  alone  for  us  con- 
stitutes reality,  is  neyer  final  or  complete :  that  thus  absolute 
reality,  like  ultimate  substance,  is  never  to  be  found  by  us — 
in  a  thinking  as  little  as  in  a  material  thing — ^belonging  as 
it  does  only  to  that  divine  self-consciousness,  of  which  the 
presence  in  us  is  the  source  and  bond  of  the  ever-growing 
synthesis  called  knowledge,  but  which,  because  it  is  the 
scarce  of  that  synthesis  and  not  one  of  its  partial  results, 
is  neither  real  nor  knowable  in  the  same  sense  as  is  any 
other  object.  It  is  this  presence  which  alone  gives  meaning 
to  *  proofs  of  the  being  of  God ;'  to  Locke's  among  the  rest. 
For  it  is  in  a  sense  true,  as  he  held,  that  'my  own  real 
existence '  is  evidence  of  the  existence  of  God,  since  the  self, 
in  the  only  sense  in  which  it  is  absolutely  real  or  an  ultimate 
subject,  is  already  God.* 

147.  Our  knowledge  of  Gk)d's  existence,  according  to  him,  Locke's 
is  *  demonstrative,'  based  on  the  *  intuitive '  knowledge  of  P^^l^ 
our  own.  Strictly  taken,  according  to  his  definitions,  this  existenc* 
must  mean  that  the  agreement  of  the  idea  of  God  with  ex-  o^  ^^' 
istenee  is  perceived  mediately  through  the  agreement  of  the 
idea  of  self  with  existence,  which  is  perceived  immediately ; 
that  thus  the  idea  of  God  and  the  idea  of  self  *  agree.'  •  We 
need  not,  however,  further  dwell  either  on  the  contradiction 
implied  in  the  knowledge  of  real  existence,  if  knowledge  is  a 
perception  of  agreement  between  ideas  and  if  real  existence 
is  the  antithesis  of  ideas ;  or  on  the  embarrassments  which 
follow  when  a  definition  of  reasoning,  only  really  applicable 
to  the  comparison  of  quantities,  is  extended  to  other  regions 
of  knowledge.  Locke  virtually  ignores  his  definitions  in  the 
passage  before  us.  ^  If  we  know  there  is  some  real  being ' 
(as  we  do  know  in  the  knowledge  of  our  own  existence)  *  and 
that  non-entity  cannot  produce  any  real  being,  it  is  an  evi- 
dent demonstration  that  from  eternity  there  has  been  some- 
thing ;  since  what  was  not  Irom  eternity  had  a  beginning, 
and  what  had  a  beginning  must  be  produced  by  something 
else'  (Book  iv.  chap.  x.  sec.  3).  Next  as  to  the  quali- 
ties of  this  something  else.  'What  had  its  being  and 
beginning  from  another  must  also  have    all    that    which 

>  See  below,  pdiftgraph  162.  *  See  above,  parsgrat^  25  and  24. 


126  GENERAL  INTKODUOTION. 

is  in,  and  belongs  to,  its  being  from  another  too '  (Ibid, 
sec.  4.).  From  this  is  deduced  the  supreme  power  and 
perfect  knowledge  of  the  eternal  being  upon  the  principle 
that  whateyer  is  in  the  effect  must  also  be  in  the  cause 
The»  — a  principle,  however,  which  has  to  be  subjected  to 
muBthaTe  awkward  limitations  in  order  that,  while  proving  enough, 
thing  from  it  may  not  prove  too  much.  It  might  seem  that,  accor- 
etornityto  ^i^g  ^o  it,  since  the  real  being,  from  which  as  effect  the 
now  is.  eternal  being  as  cause  is  demonstrated,  is  '  both  material  and 
cogitative '  or  *  made  up  of  body  and  spirit,'  matter  as  well 
as  thought  must  belong  to  the  eternal  being  too.  That 
thought  must  belong  to  him,  Locke  is  quite  clear.  It  is  as 
impossible,  he  holds,  that  thought  should  be  derived  from 
matter,  or  from  matter  and  motion  together,  as  that  some- 
thing should  be  derived  fix)m  nothing.  *  If  we  will  suppose 
nothing  first  or  eternal,  matter  can  never  begin  to  be ;  if  we 
suppose  bare  matter  without  motion  eternal,  motion  can 
never  begin  to  be :  if  we  suppose  only  matter  and  motion 
first  or  eternal,  thought  can  never  begin  to  be  *  (Book  iv. 
chap.  X.  sec.  10).  The  objection  which  is  sure  to  occur,  that 
it  must  be  equally  impossible  for  matter  to  be  derived  from 
thought,  he  can  scarcely  be  said  to  face.  He  takes  refuge  in 
the  supreme  power  of  the  eternal  being,  as  that  which  is  able 
to  create  matter  out  of  nothing.  He  does  not  anticipate  the 
rejoinder  to  which  he  thus  lays  himself  open,  that  this  power 
in  the  eternal  being  to  produce  one  effect  not  homogeneous 
with  itself,  viz.  matter,  may  extend  to  another  effect,  viz. 
thought,  and  that  thus  the  argument  from  thought  in  the 
effect  to  thought  in  the  cause  becomes  invalid,  and  nothing 
but  blind  power,  we  know  not  what,  remains  as  the  attribute 
of  the  eternal  being.  Nor  does  he  remember,  when  he  meets 
the  objection  drawn  from  the  inconceivability  of  matter  being 
made  out  of  nothing  by  saying  that  what  is  inconceivable  is 
not  therefore  impossible  {ibid,  sec.  19),  that  it  is  simply  the 
inconceivability  of  a  sequence  of  something  upon  nothing 
that  has  given  him  his  ^evident  demonstration  *  of  an  eternal 
being. 
How  148.  The  value  of  the  first  step  in  Locke's  argument — the 

musrbe^'  inference,  namely,  from  there  being  something  now  to  there 
undepstood  having  been  something  from  eternity — must  be  differently 
if '*im«Bt  estimated  according  to  the  meaning  attached  to  *  something* 
id  to  be  and  *  from  eternity.'  If  the  existence  of  something  means 
the  occurrence  of  an  event,  of  this  undoubtedly  it  can  always 


INFERENCE  TO  AN  ETERNAL  CAUSE.  127 

be  said  that  it  follows  another  event,  nor  to  this  sequence 
can  any  limit  be  supposed,  for  a  first  event  wonld  not  be  an 
event  at  all.    It  wonld  be  a  contingency  contingent  upon 
nothing.     Thus  understood,  the  argument  from  a  something 
now  to  a  something  from  eternity  is  merely  a  statement  of 
the  infinity  of  time  according  to  that  notion  of  infinity,  as  a 
'  progressus  ad  indefinitum,'  which  we  have  already  seen  to 
be  Locke's.*    It  is  the  exact  reverse  of  an  argument  to  a 
creation  or  a  first  cause.     K  we  try  to  change  its  character 
by  a  supplementary  consideration  that  infinity  in  the  series 
of  events  is  inconceivable,  the  rejoinder  will  be  that  a  first 
event  is  not  for  that  reason  any  less  of  a  contradiction,  and 
that  the  infinity  which  Locke  speaks  of  only  professes  to  be 
a  negative  idea,  representing  the  impossibility  of  conceiving 
a  first  event  (Book  n.  chap.  xvii.  sec.  13,  &c.)«     In  truth, 
however,  when  Locke  speaks  of  *  something  from  eternity ' 
he  does  not  mean — what  would  clearly  be  no  God  at  all — a 
series  of  events  to  which,  because  of  evenU,  and  therefore 
in  time,  no  limit  can  be  supposed ;  but  a  being  which  is 
neither  event  nor  series  of  events,  to  which  there  is  no  before 
or  after.   The  inference  to  such  a  being  is  not  of  a  kind  with 
the  transition  frx>m  one  event  to  another  habitually  asso- 
ciated with  it ;  and  if  this  be  the  true  account  of  reasoning 
from  effect  to  cause,  no  such  reasoning  can  yield  the  result 
which  Locke  requires.     As  we  have  seen,  however,  this  is 
not  his  account  of  it,*  however  legitimately  it  may  follow 
from  his  general  doctrine. 

149.  The  inference  of  cause  with  him  is  the  inference  and  how 
from  a  change  to  something  having  power  to  produce  it.*  '^^^' 
The  value  of  this  definition  lies  not  in  the  notion  of  efficient 
power,  but  in  that  of  an  order  of  nature,  which  it  involves. 
If  instead  of  *  something  having  power  to  produce  it '  we 
read  *  something  that  accounts  for  the  change,'  it  expresses 
the  inference  on  which^  all  science  rests,  but  which  is  as  far 
as  possible  from  being  merely  a  transition  from  one  event  to 
another  that  usually  precedes  it.  An  event,  interpreted  as 
a  change  of  something  that  remains  constant,  is  no  longer  a 
mere  event.  It  is  no  longer  merely  in  time,  a  present  which 
next  moment  becomes  a  past.  It  takes  its  character  from 
relation  to  the  thing  or  system  of  things  of  which  it  is  an 
altered  appearance,  but  which  in  itself  is  always  the  same. 

'  S«e  abore,  paragraph  ]  38.  '  Cf.  n.  chap.  zzvi.  sec.  1,  and  chap. 

*  See  abore,  paragraph  68.  xxi.  sec.  1. 


12S  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Only  in  virtue  of  such  a  relation  does   it  require  to  be 
accounted  for,  to  be  referred  to  a  '  cause,'  which  is  in  truth 
the  conception  that  holds  together  or  reconciles  the  endless 
flux  of  events  with  eternal  unity.     The  cause  of  a  *  pheno- 
menon,' even  according  to  the  authoritative  exponent  of  the 
Logic  which  believes  itself  to  follow  Hume,  is  the  *sum 
total  of  its  conditions.'     In  its  fulness,  that  is,  it  is  simply 
that  system  of  things,  conceived  explicitly,  of  which  there 
must  already  have  been  an  implicit  conception  in  order  that 
the  event  might  be  regarded  as  a  change  and  thus  start  the 
search  for  a  cause.     An  event  in  time,  apart  from  reference 
to  something  not  in  time,  could  suggest  no  enquiry  into  the 
sum  of  its  conditions.     Upon  occurrence  of  a  certain  feeling 
there  might  indeed  be  spontaneous  recollection  of  a  feeling 
usually    precedent,    spontaneous    expectation    of    another 
Usually  sequent.     But  such  association  of  feelings  can  never 
explain  that  conception  of  cause  in  virtue  of  which,  when 
accounting  for  a  phenomenon,  we  set  aside  the  event  which 
in  our  actual  experience  has  usually  preceded  it,  for  one 
which  we  only  find  to  precede  it  in  the  single  case  of  a 
crucial  experiment.     That  we  do  so  shows  that  it  is  not  be- 
cause of  antecedence  in  time,  however  apparently  uniform, 
that  an  educated  man  reckons  a  certain  event  to  be  the 
cause  of  another,  but  that,  because  of  its  sole  su£Sciency 
under  the  sum  of  known  conditions  to  account  for  the  given 
event,  he  decides  it  to  be  its  uniform  antecedent,  however 
much  ordinary  appearances  may  tell  to  the  contrary.     Thus, 
though  he  may  still  strangely  define  cause  as  a  uniformly 
antecedent  event  (in  spite  of  its  being  a  definition  that  would 
prevent  him  from  speaking  of  gravity  as  the  cause  of  the 
fall  of  a  stone),  it  is  clear  that  by  such  event  he  means  one 
determined  by  a  complex  of  conditions  in  an  unchanging 
universe.    These  conditions,  again,  he  may  speak  of  as  con- 
tingencies, i.e.  as  events  contingent  upon  other  events  in 
endless  series,  but  he  must  add  ^  contingent  in  accordance 
with  the  uniformity  of  nature  * — in  other  words,  he  must 
determine  the  contingencies  by  relation  to  what  is  not  con- 
tingent ;  he  must  suppose  nature  unchanging,  though  our 
experience  of  it  through  sensation  be  a  ^  progressus  ad  inde- 
finitum ' — if  he  is  to  allow  a  possibility  of  knowledge  at  aU. 
In  short,  if  events  were  merely  events,  feelings  that  happen 
to  me  now  and  next  moment  are  over,  no  '  law  of  causation  ' 


WORLD  MUST  BE  ETERNAL,  IF  GOD  IS.  129 

and  therefore  no  knowledge  would  be  possible.  If  the  know- 
ledge founded  on  this  law  actually  exists,  then  the  ^  argumen- 
tum  a  contingeutii  mundi'  rightly  understood — the  *  in- 
ference' from  nature  to  a  being  neither  in  time  nor 
contingent  but  self-dependent  and  eternal,  that  constant 
reality  of  which  events  are  the  changing  appearances — is 
valid  because  the  conception  of  nature,  of  a  world  to  be 
known,  already  implies  such  a  being.  To  the  rejoinder  that 
implication  in  the  conception  of  nature  does  not  prove  real 
existence,  the  answer  must  be  the  question,  What  meaning 
has  real  existence,  the  antithesis  of  illusion,  except  such  as 
is  equivalent  to  this  conception  ? 

150.  The  value,  then,  of  Locke's  demonstration  of  the  The  world 
existence  of  Qod,  as  an  argument  from  there  being  something  J^^^^  *** 
now  to  an  eternal  being  from  which  the  real  existence  that  an  eternal 
we  know  *  has  all  which  is  in  and  belongs  to  it,'  depends  ^  ™"r^ 
on  our  converting  it  into  the  *  argumentum  a  contingentiA  eteriwi. 
mundi,'  stated  as  above.     In  other  words,  it  depends  on  our 
interpreting  it  in  a  manner  which  may  be  warranted  by  his 
rough  account  of  causation,  and  by  one  of  the  incompatible 

views  of  the  real  that  we  have  found  in  him,^  but  which  is 
inconsistent  with  his  opposition  of  reality  to  the  work  of  the 
mind,  and  his  reduction  of  it  to  '  particular  existence,'  as  well 
as  with  his  ordinary  view  that  '  infinite '  and  ^  eternal '  can 
represent  only  a  *progressus  ad  indefinitum.'  If  by  *real 
existence  corresponding  to  an  idea '  is  meant  its  presentation 
in  a  particular  ^  here  and  now,'  an  attempt  to  find  a  real 
existence  of  God  can  bring  us  to  nothing  but  such  a  contra- 
diction in  terms  as  a  first  event.  To  prove  it  from  the  real 
existence  of  the  self  is  to  prove  one  impossibility  from  another. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  real  existence  implies  the  determination 
of  our  ideas  by  an  order  of  nature — if  it  means  ideab  *in  ordine 
ad  nniversum '  (to  use  a  Baconian  phrase),  in  distinction  fit)m 
*  in  ordine  ad  nos ' — ^then  the  argument  from  a  present  to  an 
eternal  real  existence  is  valid,  but  simply  in  the  sense  that 
the  present  is  already  real,  and  ^  has  all  that  is  in  and  belongs 
to  it,'  only  in  virtue  of  the  relation  to  the  eternal. 

151.  This,  it  may  be  said,  is  to  vindicate  Locke's  ^  proof '  Batviii 
only  by  making  it  Pantheistic.     It  gives  us  an  eternity  of  ^^^  ^^' 
nature,  but  not  God.    Our  present  concern,  however,  is  not  istenoe  is 
with  tiie  distinction  between  Pantheism  and  true  Theism,  fop«>j;en* 

'   be  a  thmk- 
'  See  aboTe,  paragraphs 49  and  91.  ing  being? 

YOL.  I.  JL 


130 


GENEKAL  INTllODUCTIOX. 


Yes,  ac- 
cording to 
the  true 
notion  of 
the  rela- 
tion be- 
tween 
thought 
and 
matter. 


but  with  the  exposition  of  Locke's  doctrine  according  to  the 
only  development  by  which  it  can  be  made  to  show  the  real 
existence  of  an  eternal  being  at  all.  It  is  only  by  making 
the  most  of  certain  Cartesian  elements  that  appear  in  his 
doctrine,  irreconcileable  with  its  general  purport,  that  we  can 
find  fair  room  in  it  for  such  a  being,  even  as  the  system  of 
nature.  Any  attempt  to  exhibit  (in  Hegelian  phrase)  *  Spirit 
as  the  truth  of  nature,*  would  be  to  go  wholly  beyond  our 
record;  yet  without  this  the  ^ens  realissimum'  cannot  be 
the  God  whose  existence  Locke  believes  himself  to  prove — a 
thinhing  being  from  whom  matter  and  motion  are  derived, 
but  in  whom  they  are  not.  It  is  true  that,  according  to  the 
context,  it  is  the  real  existence  of  the  self  from  which  that  of 
the  eternal  being  is  proved.  This  is  because,  in  the  Fourth 
Book,  where  the  'proof*  occurs,  following  the  new  train  of 
enquiry  started  by  the  definition  of  knowledge,  Locke  has 
for  the  time  left  in  abeyance  his  fundamental  doctrine  that 
all  simple  ideas  are  types  of  reality,  and  is  writing  as  if  '  my 
own  real  existence  *  were  the  only  one  known  with  intuitive 
certainty.  This,  however,  makes  no  essential  difference  in 
the  effect  of  his  argument.  "The  given  existence,  from  which 
the  divine  is  proved,  is  treated  expressly  as  both  '  material 
and  cogitative :'  nor,  since  according  to  Locke  the  world  is 
both  and  man  is  both,  and  even  the  'thinking  thing'  takes 
its  content  from  impressions  made  by  matter,  could  it  be 
otherwise.  To  have  taken  thought  by  itself  as  the  basis  of 
the  proof  would  have  been  to  leave  the  other  part  of  the 
world,  as  he  conceived  it,  to  be  referred  to  another  God. 
The  difficulty  then  arises,  either  that  there  is  no  inference 
possible  from  the  nature  of  the  effect  to  the  nature  of  the 
eternal  being,  its  cause ;  in  which  case  no  attribute  whatever 
can  be  asserted  of  the  latter:  or  that  to  it  too,  like  the  effect, 
matter  as  well  as  thought  must  belong. 

152.  As  we  have  seen,  neither  of  these  alternative  views  is 
really  met  by  Locke.  To  the  former  we  may  reply  that  the 
relation  between  two  events,  of  which  neither  has  anything 
in  common  with  the  other,  but  which  we  improperly  speak 
of  as  effect  and  cause  (e.g.  death  and  a  sunstroke),  has  no 
likeness  to  that  which  we  have  explained  between  the  woild 
in  its  contingency  and  the  world  as  an  eternal  system — a 
relation  according  to  which  the  cause  is  the  effect  in  unity. 
Whatever  is  part  of  the  reality  of  the  world  must  belong,  it 


THEISM  AND  PANTHEISM.  131 

would  seem,  to  the  '  ens  realissimam/  its  cause.  We  are 
thus  thrown  back  on  the  other  horn  of  the  dilemma.  Is  not 
matter  part  of  the  realiiy  of  the  world  ?  This  is  a  question 
to  which  the  method  of  observing  the  individual  consciousness 
can  give  none  but  a  delusive  answer.  A  true  answer  cannot 
be  given  till  for  this  method  has  been  substituted  the  enquiry, 
How  knowledge  is  possible,  and  it  has  been  found  tliat  it  is 
only  possible  as  the  progressive  actualisation  in  us  of  a  self- 
consciousness  in  itself  complete,  and  which  in  its  completeness 
includes  the  world  as  its  object.  From  the  point  of  view  thus 
attained  the  question  as  to  matter  will  be.  How  is  it  related 
to  this  self-consciousness  ? — a  question  to  which  the  answer 
must  vary  according  to  what  is  understood  by  *  matter.*  If 
it  means  the  abstract  opposite  of  thought — that  which  is  sup- 
posed void  of  all  determination  that  comes  of  thinking — ^we 
must  pronounce  it  simply  a  delusion,  the  creation  of  self-con- 
sciousness in  one  stage  of  its  communication  to  us.  If  it 
means  the  world  as  in  space  and  time,  this  we  may  allow  to  be 
real  enough  as  a  stage  in  the  process  by  which  self-conscious- 
ness constitutes  realiiy.  Thus  understood,  we  may  speak  of  it 
roughly  as  part  of  the  '  ens  reaJissimum'  which  the  complete 
self-consciousness,  or  God,  includes  as  its  object,  without  any 
limitation  of  the  divine  perfectness.  The  limitation  only 
seems  to  arise  so  far  as  we,  being  ourselves  (as  our  knowledge 
and  morality  testify),  though  formally  self-conscious,  yet 
parts  of  this  partial  world,  interpret  it  amiss  and  ascribe  to  it 
a  reality,  in  abstraction  from  the  self-conscious  subject,  which 
it  only  derives  from  relation  to  it.  Thus  while  on  the  one  * 
hand  it  is  the  presence  in  us  of  God,  as  the  self-conscious 
source  of  reali^,  that  at  once  gives  us  the  idea  of  God  and  of 
an  eternal  self,  and  renders  superfluous  the  further  question 
as  to  their  real  existence ;  on  the  other  hand  it  is  because, 
for  all  this  presence,  we  are  but  emerging  from  nature,  of 
which  as  «.Tiimft1fl  we  are  parts,  that  to  us  there  must  seem 
an  incompatibility  of  existence  between  God  and  matter, 
between  the  self  and  the  flux  of  events  which  makes  our 
life.  This  necessary  illusion  is  our  bondage,  but  when  the 
source  of  illusion  is  known,  the  bondage  is  already  being 
broken. 

158.  We  have  now  sufficiently  explored  the  system  which  Locke'san- 
it  was  Hume's  mission  to  try  to  make  consistent  with  itself.  Hume**^ 
We  have  found  that  it  is  governed  throughout  by  the  anti-  takes  one. 

K  2 


132  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

side  of  thesis  between  what  is  given  to  consciousness — that  in  regard 
tro™  '*  ^  which  the  mind  is  passive — as  the  supposed  real  on  the 
one  side,  and  what  is  *  invented,'  *  created,*  *  superinduced  * 
by  the  mind  on  the  other :  while  yet  this  *  real '  in  all  its 
forms,  as  described  by  Locke,  has  turned  out  to  be  consti- 
tuted by  such  ideas  as,  according  to  him,  are  not  given  but 
invented.  Stripped  of  these  superinductions,  nothing  has 
been  found  to  remain  of  it  but  that  of  which  nothing  can  be 
'.said — a  chaos  of  unrelated,  and  therefore  unmeaning,  mdi- 
vidua.  Turning  to  the  theory  of  the  mind  itself,  the  source 
of  the  superinduction,  we  have  found  this  to  be  a  reduplica- 
tion of  the  prolonged  inconsistency  which  forms  the  theory 
of  the  *  real.'  It  impresses  itself  with  that  which,  according 
to  the  other  theory,  is  the  impress  of  matter,  and  it  really 
exists  as  that  which  it  itself  invents.  The  value  of  Hume's 
philosophy  lies  in  its  being  an  attempt  to  carry  out  the  anti- 
thesis more  rigorously — to  clear  the  real,  whether  under  the 
designation  of  mind  or  of  its  object,  of  all  that  could  not  be 
reckoned  as  given  in  feelings  which  occur  to  us  *  whether  we 
will  or  no.'  The  consequence  is  a  splendid  failure,  a  failure 
which  it  might  have  been  hoped  would  have  been  taken  as  a 
sufficient  proof  that  a  theory,  which  starts  from  that  anti- 
thesis, cannot  even  be  stated  without  implicitly  contradicting 
itself. 
Hume's  154.  Such  a  doctrine — a  doctrine  founded  on  the  testimony 

fouo'toT  ^^*^®  senses,  which  ends  by  showing  that  the  senses  testify  to 
own  pre-  nothing — cannot  be  criticised  step  by  step  according  to  the 
order  in  which  its  author  puts  it,  for  its  characteristic  is  that, 
in  order  to  state  itself,  it  has  to  take  for  granted  popular 
notions  which  it  afterwards  shows  to  be  unmeaning.  Its  power 
over  ordinary  thinkers  lies  just  in  this,  that  it  arrives  at  its 
destructive  result  by  means  of  propositions  which  every  one 
believes,  but  to  the  validity  of  which  its  result  is  really  fatal. 
An  account  of  our  primitive  consciousness,  which  derives  its 
plausibility  from  availing  itself  of  the  conceptions  of  cause 
and  substance,  is  the  basis  of  the  argument  which  reduces 
these  conceptions  to  words  misunderstood.  It  cannot,  there- 
fore, be  treated  by  itself,  as  it  stands  in  the  first  part  of  the 
Treatise  on  the  Understanding,  but  must  be  taken  in  con- 
nection with  Part  FV.,  especially  with  the  section  on  *  Scep- 
ticism with  regard  to  the  Senses ; '  not  upon  the  plan  of  dis- 
crediting a  principle  by  reference  to  the  *  dangerous  '  nature 


iDiSBes. 


BERKELEY'S  THEISTIC  INTEREST.  133 

of  its  conseqaences,  but  because  the  final  doctrine  brings  out  This 
the  inconsistencies  lurking  in  that  assumed  to  begin  with.  ^^^ 
On  this  side  of  his  scepticism  Hume  mainly  followed  the  Berkeley. 
orthodox  Berkeley,  of  whose  criticism  of  Locke,  made  with 
a  very  different  purpose,  some  account  must  first  be  given. 
The  connection  between  the  two  authors  is  instructiYe  in 
many  ways ;  not  least  as  showing  that  when  the  most  pious 
theological  purpose  expresses  itself  in  a  doctrine  resting  on 
an  inadequate  philosophical  principle,  it  is  the  principle  and 
not  the  purpose  that  will  regulate  the  permanent  effect  of 
the  doctrine. 

156.  Berkeley's  treatises,  we  must  remember,  though  pro-  Berkeley't 
fessedly  philosophical,  really  form  a  theological  polemic.  He  "^gt*^ 
wrote  as  the  champion  of  orthodox  Christianity  against  making 
*  mathematical  atheism,'  and,  like  others  of  his  order,  content  J^®,^°* 
with  the  demolition  of  the  rival  stronghold,  did  not  stay  to 
enquire  whether  his  own  untempered  mortar  could  really 
hold  together  the  fabric  of  knowledge  and  rational  religion 
which  he  sought  to  maintain.  He  found  practical  ungodli- 
ness and  immorality  excusing  themselves  by  a  theory  of  *  ma- 
terialism * — a  theory  which  made  the  whole  conscious  expe- 
rience of  man  dependent  upon  *  unperceiving  matter.'  This, 
whatever  it  might  be,  was  not  an  object  which  man  could 
love  or  reverence,  or  to  which  he  could  think  of  himself  as 
accountable.  Berkeley,  full  of  devout  zeal  for  Grod  and  man, 
and  not  without  a  tincture  of  clerical  party-spirit  (as  appears 
in  his  heat  against  Shaftesbury,  whom  he  ought  to  have  re- 
garded as  a  philosophical  yoke-fellow),  felt  that  it  must  be 
got  rid  of.  He  saw,  or  thought  he  saw,  that  the  *  new  way 
of  ideas '  had  only  to  be  made  consistent  with  itself,  and  the 
oppressive  shadow  must  vanish.  Ideas,  according  to  that 
new  way  (or,  to  speak  less  ambiguously,  feelings)  make  up 
our  experience,  and  they  are  not  matter.  Let  us  get  rid, 
then,  of  the  self-contradictory  assumption  that  they  are  either 
copies  of  matter — copies  of  that,  of  which  it  is  the  sole  and 
simple  differentia  that  it  is  not  an  idea,  or  its  effects — 
effects  of  that  which  can  only  be  described  as  the  unknown 
opposite  of  the  only  efficient  power  with  which  we  are  ac- 
quainted— and  what  becomes^  of  the  philosopher's  blind  and 
dead  substitute  for  the  living  and  knowing  Ood  P  It  was 
one  thing,  however,  to  show  the  contradictions  involved  in 
Locke's  doctrine  of  matter,  another  effectively  to  replace 


184  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

it.  To  the  latter  end  Berkeley  cannot  be  said  to  have  made 
any  permanent  contribution.  That  explicit  reduction  of 
ideas  to  feelings  *  particular  in  time/  which  was  his  great 
weapon  of  destruction,  was  incompatible  with  his  doing  sOs 
He  adds  nothing  to  the  philosophy,  which  he  makes  con- 
sistent with  itself,  while  by  making  it  consistent  he  empties 
it  of  three  parts  of  its  suggestiveness.  His  doctrine,  in  short, 
is  merely  Locke  purged,  and  Locke  purged  is  no  Locke. 
WHat  if  X56,  The  question  which  he  mainly  dealt  with  may  be  stated 

relation  of  ^^  general  terms  as  that  of  the  relation  between  the  mind  and 
mind  and    the  external  world.     Under  this  general  statement,  however, 
°**^^'      are  covered  several  distinct  questions,  the  confusion  between 
which  has  been  a  great  snare  for  philosophers — questions  as 
to  the  relations  (a)  between  a  sensitive  and  non-sensitive 
body,  {b)  between  tiiiought  and  its  object,  (c)  between  thought 
and  something  only  qualified  as  the  negation  of  thought. 
The  last  question,  it  will  be  observed,  is  what  the  second 
becomes  upon  a  certain  notion  being  formed  of  what  the 
object  of  thought  must  be.   Upon  this  notion  being  discarded 
a  further  question  ((2),  also  covered  by  the  above  general 
statement,  must  still  remain  as  to  the  relation  between 
thought,  as  in  each  man,  and  the  world  which  he  does  not 
make,  but  which,  in  some  sort,  makes  him  what  he  is.    In 
what  follows,  these  questions,  for  the  sake  of  brevity,  will  be 
referred  to  symbolically. 
Confuaioiii       157.  Locke*s  doctrine  of  matter,  as  we  have  seen,  involves 
LwWs^*"  a  confusion  between  (a)  and  (ft).     The  feeling  of  touch  in 
material-     virtue  of  an  intellectual  interpretation — intdUctuaX  because 
""^  implying  the  action  of  the  mind  as  (according  to  Locke)  the 

source  of  ideas  of  relation — becomes  the  idea  of  solidity,  t.6. 
the  idea  of  a  relation  between  bodies  in  the  way  of  impulse 
and  resistance.  But  the  function  of  the  intellect  in  con- 
stituting the  relation  is  ignored.  Under  cover  of  the 
ambiguous  '  idea,'  which  stands  alike  for  a  nervous  irrita- 
tion and  the  intellectual  interpretation  thereof,  the  feeling 
of  touch  and  conception  of  solidity  are  treated  as  one  and  the 
same.  Thus  the  irue  cmicewed  outwardness  of  body  to  body 
— an  outwardness  which  thought,  as  the  source  of  relations, 
can  alone  constitute — becomes  first  an  imaginary /aZ^  out- 
wardness of  body  to  the  organs  of  touch,  and  then,  by  a 
further  fallacy — these  organs  being  confused  with  the  mind 
— an  outwardness  of  body  to  mind,  which  we  need  only  kick 


SHALLOWNESS  OF  HIS  ffiEALISM.  135 

a  stone  to  be  sore  of.  Meanwhile  the  consideration  of 
question  {d)  necessitates  the  belief  that  the  real  world  does 
not  come  and  go  with  each  man's  fleeting  consciousness, 
and  no  distinction  being  recognised  between  consciousness 
as  fleeting  and  consciousness  as  permanent^  or  between  feel- 
ing and  thought,  the  real  world  comes  to  be  regarded  as  the 
absolute  opposite  of  thought  and  its  work.  This  opposition 
combines  with  the  supposed  externality  of  body  to  mind  to 
give  the  notion  that  body  is  the  real.  The  qualities  which 
*  the  mind  finds  inseparable  from  body '  thus  become  quali- 
ties which  would  exist  all  the  same  ^  whether  there  were  a 
perceiving  mind  or  no/  and  are  primarily  real ;  while  such  as 
consist  in  our  feelings,  though  real  in  so  far  as,  *  not  being  of 
our  own  making,  they  imply  the  action  of  things  without 
us,'  are  yet  only  secondarily  so  because  this  action  is  relative 
to  something  which  is  not  body.  Then,  finally,  by  a  re- 
newed confusion  of  the  relation  between  thought  and  its 
object  with  that  between  body  and  body,  qualities,  which  are 
credited  with  a  primary  reality  as  independent  of  and  anti- 
thetical to  the  mind,  are  brought  within  it  again  as  ideas. 
They  are  supposed  to  copy  themselves  upon  it  by  impact  and 
impression ;  and  that  not  in  touch  merely,  but  (visual  feel- 
ings being  interpreted  by  help  of  the  same  conception)  in 
sight  also. 

158.  Such  *  materialism '  invites  two  different  methods  of  Two  ways 
attack.     On  the  one  hand  its  recognised  principle,  that  all  ^^®^^"^ 
intellectual  *  superinduction  *  upon  simple  feeling  is  a  de-  Berkeley 
parture  from  the  real,  may  be  insisted  on,  and  it  may  be  chooses  the 
shown  that  it  is  only  by  such  superinduction  that  simple  obvious. 
feeling  becomes  a  feeling  of  body.     Matter,  then,  with  all 
its  qualities,  is  a  fiction  except  so  far  as  these  can  be  re- 
duced to  simple  feelings.     Such  in  substance  was  Berkeley's 
short  method  with  the  materialists.     In  his  early  life  it 
seemed  to  him    sufficient   for   the  purposes    of   orthodox 
'spiritualism,'  because,  having  posed  the  materialist,   he 
took  the  moral  and  spiritual  attributes  of  God  as  ^  revealed,' 
without  enquiring  into  the  possibility  of  such  revelation  to 
a  merely  sensitive  consciousness.      As  he  advanced,  other 
questions,  fatal  to  the   constructive  value  of  his  original 
method,  began  to  force  themselves  upon  him.     Granting 
that  intellectual  superinduction = fiction,  how  is  the  fiction 
possible  to  a  mind  which  cannot  originate  ?    Exclude  from 


■/ 


136  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

reality  all  that  such  fiction  constitutes,  and  what  remains  to 

be  real  ?    These  questions,  however,  though  their  eflFect  on 

his  mind  appears  in  the  later  sections  of  his  *  Siris,'  he  never 

systematically  pursued.     He  thus  missed  the  true  method 

of  attack  on  materialism — ^the  only  one  that  does  not  build 

again  that  which  it  destroys — the  method  which  allows  that 

/  matter  is  real  but  only  so  in  virtue  of  that  intellectual  super- 

/  induction  upon  feeling  without  which  there  could  be  for  us 

i       /  no  reality  at  all :  that  thus  it  is  indeed  opposed  to  thought, 

\bnt  only  by  a  position  which  is  thought's  own  act.     For  the 

development  of  such  views  Berkeley  had  not  patience  in  his 

youth  nor  leisure  in  his  middle  life.     Whatever  he  may  have 

suggested,  all  that  he  logically  achieved  was  an  exposure  of 

the  equivocation  between  feeling  and  felt  body ;  and  of  this 

the  next  result,  as  appears  in  Hume,  was  a  doctrine  which. 

indeed  delivers  mind  from  dependence  on  matter,  but  only 

by  reducing  it  in  effect  to  a  succession  of  feelings  which 

cannot  know  themselves. 

His  ac-  15^'  I^  "^^  upon  the  extension  of  the  metaphor  of  impres- 

count  of      sion  to  sight  as  well  as  touch,  and  the  consequent  notion 

tion^'      *^^*  body,   with   its    inseparable   qualities,  revealed  itself 

tween         through  both  senses,  that  Berkeley  first  fastened.     Is  it 

tanribie"^  evident,  as  Locke  supposed  it  to  be,  that  men  *  perceive  by 

their  sight'  not  colours  merely,  but  *a  distance  between 

bodies  of  different  colours  and  between  parts  of  the  same 

body '  5 '  in   other  words,   situation  and   magnitude  P      To 

show  that  they  do  not  is  the  purpose  of  Berkeley's  *  Essay 

towards   a  new  Theory  of  Vision.'     He  starts  from  two 

principles  which  he  takes   as  recognised :    one,  that  the 

♦  proper  and  immediate  object  of  sight  is  colour';  the  other, 
that  distance  from  the  eye,  or  distance  in  the  line  of  vision, 
is  not  immediately  seen.  If,  then,  situation  and  magnitude 
are  *  properly  and  immediately  *  seen,  they  must  be  qualities 
of  colour.  Now  in  one  sense,  according  to  Berkeley,  they  are 
so :  in  other  words,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  visible  extension. 
We  see  lights  and  colours  in  *  sundry  situations  *  as  well  as 

*  in  degrees  of  faintness  and  clearness,  confusion  and  dis- 
tinctness.' {Theory  of  Vision^  sec.  77.)  We  also  see  objects 
ajs  made  up  of  certain  *  quantities  of  coloured  points,'  t.e. 
as  having  visible  magnitude.     (Ibid.  sec.  54.)     But  situation 

*  Locke,  Essay  n*  chap>  ziii*  sec.  2. 


VISIBLE  AND  TANGIBLE  EXTENSION.  V\7 

and  magnitude  as  visible  are  not  extemal,  not  ^  qualities  of  We  do  no 
body,*  nor  do  they  represent  by  any  necessary  connection  the  ^*th(mt*"* 
situation  and  magnitude  that  are  truly  qualities  of  body,  the  mind. 
'  without  the  mind  and  at  a  distance.'  These  are  tangible. 
Distance  in  all  its  forms — as  distance  from  the  eye ;  as  dis- 
tance between  parts  of  the  same  body,  or  magnitude ;  and  as 
distance  of  body  from  body,  or  situation — is  tangible.  What 
a  man  means  when  he  says  that  ^  he  sees  this  or  that  thing 
at  a  distance  '  is  that  ^  what  he  sees  suggests  to  his  under- 
standing that  after  having  passed  a_gertftiJOL.diHta.ure,  to  be 
measured  by  tEe^otion  .of  his  body  which  is  perceivable  by 
touch,  lie~  shall  come  to  perceive  such  and  such  tangible 
Ideas  which  have  been  usually  connected  with  such  and  such 
visible  ideas '  (Ibid.  sec.  45).  On  the  same  principle  we  are 
said^to  see  the  magnitude  and  situation  of  bodies.  Owing 
to  long  experience  of  the  connection  of  these  tangible  ideas 
with  visible  ones,  the  magnitude  of  the  latter  and  their 
degrees  of  faintness  and  clearness,  of  confusion  and  distinct- 
ness, enable  us  to  form  a  '  sudden  and  true  '  estimate  of  the 
magnitude  of  the  former  {i.e.  of  bodies) ;  even  as  visible 
situation  enables  us  to  form  a  like  estimate  of  the  '  situa- 
tion of  things  outward  and  tangible'  (Ibid.  sees.  56  and  99). 
The  connection,  however,  between  the  two  sets  of  ideas, 
Berkeley  insists,  is  habitual  only,  not  necessary.  As  Hume 
afterwards  said  of  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  it  is  not 
constituted  by  the  nature  of  the  ideas  related.'  The  visible 
ideas,  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  ^  suggest  to  us  the  various 
magnitudes  of  external  objects  before  we  touch  them,  might 
have  suggested  no  such  thing.'  That  would  really  have  been 
the  case  had  our  eyes  been  so  framed  as  that  the  maximum 
visibile  should  be  less  than  the  minimv/m  tangibile ;  and,  as 
a  matter  of  constant  experience,  the  greater  visible  extension 
suggests  sometimes  a  greater,  sometimes  a  loss,  tangible  ex* 
tension  according  to  the  degree  of  its  strength  or  faintness, 
^  being  in  its  own  nature  equally  fitted  to  bring  into  our  minds 
the  idea  of  small  or  great  or  no  size  at  all,  just  as  the  words 
of  a  language  are  in  their  own  nature  indifferent  to  signify 
this  or  that  thing,  or  nothing  at  all.'     (Ibid.  sees.  62-64;) 

160.  So  far,  then,  the  conclusion  merely  is  that  body  as  dot  jet 
external,  and  space  as  a  relation  between  bodies  or  parts  of  ^^^  ^^^'^ 
a  body,  are  not  both  seen  and  felt,  but  felt  only ;  in  other 

>  See  below,  paragraph  283. 


138  GEXERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

The  *  esse'  words,  that  it  is  only  through  the  organs  of  touch  that  we 
the^'*TOi>'  receive,  strictly  speaking,  impressions  from  without.  Thin 
dpi.'  is  all  that  the  Essay  on  Vision  goes  to  show ;  but  according 

to  the  'Principles  of  Human  Knowledge'  this  conclusion 
was  merely  provisional.  The  object  of  touch  does  not,  any 
more  than  the  object  of  sight,  ^  exist  without  the  mind,'  nor 
is  it '  the  image  of  an  external  thing.'  ^  In  strict  truth  the 
ideas  of  sight,  when  by  them  we  apprehend  distance  and 
things  placed  at  a  distance,  do  not  suggest  or  mark  out  to 
us  things  actually  existing  at  a  distance,  but  only  admonish 
us  what  ideas  of.  touch  will  be  imprinted  in  our  minds  at 
such  and  such  distances  of  time,  and  in  consequence  of  such 
and  such  actions '  (*  Principles  of  H.  K.'  sec.  44).  Whether, 
then,  we  speak  of  visible  or  tangible  objects,  the  object  w  the 
idea,  its  '  esse  is  the  percipi.'  Body  is  not  a  thing  separate 
from  the  idea  of  touch,  yet  revealed  by  it;  so  far  as  it  exists 
at  all,  it  must  either  be  that  idea  or  be  a  succession  of  ideas 
of  which  that  idea  is  suggestive.  It  follows  that  the  notion 
of  the  real  which  identifies  it  with  matter,  as  something  ex- 
ternal to  and  independent  of  consciousness,  and  which  derives 
the  reality  of  ideas  from  their  relation  to  body  as  thus  out- 
ward,  must  disappear.  Must  not,  then,  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  real  and  fantastic,  betvreen  dreams  and  facts, 
disappear  with  it?  What  meaning  is  there  in  asking 
whether  any  given  idea  is  real  or  not,  unless  a  reference  is 
implied  to  something  other  than  the  idea  itself? 
What  then  170.  Berkeley's  theory,  no  less  than  Locke's,  requires  such 
becomes  of  reference.  He  insists,  as  much  as  Locke  does,  on  the  diflfer- 
between°°  eucc  between  ideas  of  imagination  which  do,  and  those  of 
reality  and  sense  which  do  not,  depend  on  our  own  will.  *  It  is  no 
^  more  than  willing,  and  straightway  this  or  that  idea  arises 

in  my  fancy ;  ahd  by  the  same  power  it  is  obliterated  and 
makes  way  for  another.'  But  *when  in  broad  daylight  I 
open  my  eyes,  it  is  not  in  my  power  to  choose  whether  I 
shall  see  or  no,  or  to  determine  what  particular  objects  shall 
present  themselves  to  my  view.'  Moreover  *the  ideas  of 
sense  are  more  strong,  lively,  and  distinct  than  those  of  the 
imagination;  they  have  likewise  a  steadiness,  order,  and 
coherence,  and  are  not  excited  at  random  as  those  which  are 
the  effects  of  human  wills  often  are,  but  in  a  regular  train 
and  series'  (Ibid.  sees.  28-30).  These  characteristics  of 
ideas  of  sense,  however,  do  not  with  Berkeley,  any  more  than 


WHAT  IDEAS  ARE  REAL?  180 

with  Locke,  properly  speaking,  constitute  their  reality.  This 
lies  in  their  relation  to  something  else,  of  which  these  cha- 
racteristics are  the  tests.  The  diflference  between  the  two 
writers  lies  in  their  several  views  as  to  what  this  *  something 
else '  is.  With  Locke  it  was  body  or  matter,  as  proximately, 
though  in  subordination  to  the  Divine  Will,  the  *  imprinter ' 
of  those  most  lively  ideas  which  we  cannot  make  for  our- 
selves. His  followers  insisted  on  the  proximate,  while  they 
ignored  the  ultimate,  reference.  Hence,  as  Berkeley  con- 
ceived, their  Atheism,  which  he  could  cut  from  under  their  feet 
by  the  simple  plan  of  eliminating  the  proximate  reference 
altogether,  and  liius  showing  that  Gk>d,  not  matter,  is  the  im- 
mediate ^  imprinter '  of  ideas  on  the  senses  and  the  suggester 
of  such  ideas  of  imagination  as  the  ideas  of  sense,  in  virtue  of 
habitual  association,  constantly  introduce  (Ibid.  sec.  33). 

171.  To  eliminate  the  reference  to  matter  might  seem  to  Theieal-a 
be  more  easy  than  to  substitute  for  it  a  reference  to  God.  q^  ^  ** 
If  the  object  of  the  idea  is  only  the  idea  itself,  does  not  all  causea. 
determination  by  relation  logically  disappear  from  the  idea, 
except  (perhaps)  such  as  consists  in  the  fact  of  its  sequence 

or  antecedence  to  other  ideas  9  This  issue  was  afterwards  to 
be  tried  by  Hume — ^with  what  consequences  to  science  and 
religion  we  shall  see.  Berkeley  avoids  it  by  insisting  that 
the  *  percipi,'  to  which  *  esse  *  is  equivalent,  implies  reference  . 
to  a  mind.  At  first  sight  this  reference,  as  common  to  all 
ideas  alike,  would  not  seem  to  avail  much  as  a  basis  either 
for  a  distinction  between  the  real  and  fantastic  or  for  any 
Theism  except  such  as  would  '  entitle  Grod  to  all  our  fancies.' 
If  it  is  to  serve  Berkeley's  purpose,  we  must  suppose  the  idea 
to  carry  with  it  not  merely  a  relation  to  mind  but  a  relation 
to  it  as  its  effect,  and  the  conscious  subject  to  carry  with 
him  such  a  distinction  between  his  own  mind  and  God's  as 
leads  him  to  refer  his  ideas  to  God's  mind  as  their  cause  when 
they  are  lively,  distinct  and  coherent,  but  when  they  are  other- 
wise, to  his  own.  And  this,  in  substance,  is  Berkeley's  sup- 
{K)8ition.  To  show  the  efficient  power  of  mind  he  appeals  to  ^ 
our  consciousness  of  ability  to  produce  at  will  ideas  of  im- 
agination ;  to  show  that  there  is  a  divine  mind,  distinct  j 
from  our  own,  he  appeals  to  our  consciousness  of  inability  to  / 
.  produce  ideas  of  sense.  j^  j^  ^i^^ 

172.  Even  those  least  disposed  to  Vanquish  Berkeley  with  aracces- 
a  grin '  have  found  his  doctrine  of  the  real,  which  is  also  his  f^^^  ^ 


140  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

doctrine  of  God,  *  nnsatisfiactory.'  By  the  real  world  they 
are  accustomed  to  understand  something  which — at  least  in 
respect  of  its  *  elements  *  or  *  conditions  *  or  *  laws  * — ^perma- 
nently is;  though  the  combinations  of  the  elements,  the 
events  which  flow  from  the  conditions,  the  manifestations  of 
the  laws,  may  never  be  at  one  time  what  they  will  be  at  the 
next.  But  according  to  the  Berkeleian  doctrine  the  perma- 
nent seems  to  disappear :  the  '  is '  gives  place  to  a  '  has 
been '  and  *  will  be.'  If  I  say  {Seitcruc&s)  *  there  is  a  body,'  I 
must  mean  according  to  it  that  a  feeling  has  just  occurred 
to  me,  which  has  been  so  constantly  followed  by  certain  other 
feelings  that  it  suggests  a  lively  expectation  of  these.  The 
suggestive  feeling  alone  is,  and  it  is  ceasing  to  be.  If  this  is 
the  true  account  of  propositions  suggested  by  everyone's 
constantly-recurrent  experience,  what  are  we  to  make  of 
scientific  truths,  0.g.  *  a  body  will  change  its  place  sooner 
than  let  another  enter  it,'  ^  planets  move  in  ellipses,'  '  the 
square  on  the  hypotheneuse  is  equal  to  the  squares  on  the 
sides.'  In  these  cases,  too,  does  the  present  reality  lie 
merely  in  a  feeling  experienced  by  this  or  that  scientific  man, 
and  to  him  suggestive  of  other  feelings  ?  Does  the  proposi- 
tion that  ^planets  move  in  ellipses'  mean  that  to  some 
watcher  of  the  skies,  who  understands  Kepler's  laws,  a  cer- 
tain perception  of  *  visible  extension '  (i.e.  of  colour  or  light 
and  shade)  not  only  suggests,  as  to  others,  a  particular 
expectation  of  other  feelings,  which  expectation  is  called  a 
planet,  but  a  further  expectation,  not  shared  by  the  multitude, 
of  feelings  suggesting  successive  situations  of  the  visible  ex- 
tension, which  further  expectation  is  called  elliptical  motion? 
Such  an  explanation  of  general  propositions  would  be  a  form 
of  the  doctrine  conveniently  named  after  Protagoras— 'aX.»?dw 
5  iKocrrip  iKooTora  ioKaV — a  doctrine  which  the  vindicators 
of  Berkeley  are  careful  to  tell  us  we  must  not  confound  with 
his.  The  question,  however,  is  not  whether  Berkeley  him- 
self admits  the  doctrine,  but  whether  or  no  it  is  the  logical 
consequence  of  the  method  which  he  uses  for  the  overthrow 
of  materialists  and  ^  mathematical  Atheists  '  P 
Berkeley  173.  His  purpose  was  the  maintenance  of  Theism,  and-  a 
^^^^  *ru6  instinct  told  him  that  pure  Theism,  as  distinct  from 
fusion  nature-worship  and  dsemonism/  has  no  philosophical  founda- 
thoo^t  ^0Hy  unless  it  can  be  shown  that  there  is  nothing  real  apart 
and  feel-     from  thought.     But  in  the  hurry  of  theological  advocacy, 


FELT  THINGS  ONLY  FEELmOS.  141 

and  under  the  influence  of  a  misleading  terminology,  he 
fidled  to  distinguish  this  true  proposition — ^there  is  nothing 
real  apart  from  thought — from  this  false  one,  its  virtual 
contradictory — ^there  is  nothing  other  than  feeling.  The 
confusion  was  coyered,  if  not  caused,  by  the  ambiguity,  often 
noticed,  in  the  use  of  the  term  *  idea.'  This  to  Berkeley's 
generation  stood  alike  for  feeling  proper,  which  to  the  subject 
that  merely  feels  is  neither  outer  nor  inner,  because  not  re- 
ferring itself  to  either  mind  or  thing,  and  for  conception,  or 
an  object  thought  of  under  relations.  According  to  Locke, 
pain,  colour,  solidity,  are  all  ideas  equally  with  each  other  and 
equally  with  the  idea  of  pain,  idea  of  colour,  idea  of  solidity. 
If  all  alike,  however,  wore  feelings  proper,  there  would  be  no 
world  either  to  exist  or  be  spoken  of.  Locke  virtually  saves  it 
by  two  suppositions,  each  incompatible  with  the  equivalence 
of  idea  to  feeling,  and  implying  the  conversion  of  it  into  con- 
ception as  above  defined.  One  is  that  there  are  abstract  ideas ; 
the  other  that  there  are  primary  qualities  of  which  ideas  are 
copies,  but  which  do  not  come  and  go  with  our  feelings.  The 
latter  supposition  gives  a  world  that  'i-eally  exists,'  the  former 
a  world  that  may  be  known  and  spoken  of;  but  neither  can 
maintain  itself  without  a  theory  of  conception  which  is  not 
forthcoming  in  Locke  himself.  We  need  not  traverse  again 
the  contradictions  which  according  to  his  statement  they 
involve — contradictions  which,  under  whatever  disguise,  must 
attach  to  every  philosophy  that  admits  a  reality  either  in  PorLocke't 
things  as  apart  from  thought  or  in  thought  as  apart  from  '  idea  of  a 
things,  and  only  disappear  when  the  thing  as  thought  of,  and  gXtitu^ea 
through  thought  individualised  by  the  relations  which  consti-  'idea' 
tute  its  community  with  the  universe,  is  recognised  as  alone  "™W 
the  real  Misled  by  the  phrase  '  idea  of  a  thing,'  we  fancA 
that  idea  and  thing  have  each  a  separate  reality  of  their  own  J| 
and  then  puzzle  ourselves  with  questions  as  to  how  the  idea/ 
can  represent  the  thing — how  the  ideas  of  primary  qualities 
can  be  copies  of  them,  and  how,  if  the  real  thing  of  experience 
be  merely  individual,  a  general  idea  can  be.abstracted  from 
it.  These  questions  Berkeley  asked  and  found  unanswerable. 
'TTBere  were  then  two  ways  of  dealing  with  them  before  him. 
One  was  to  supersede  them  by  a  truer  view  of  thought  and 
its  object,  as  together  in  essential  correlation  constituting  the 
real;  but  this  way  he  did  not  take.  The  other  was  to  avoid 
them  by  merging  both  thing  aud  idea  in  the  indifference  of 


142 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Which,  if 
idea  »  feel- 
ing, dyea 
away  with 
■pace  and 
body. 


He  does 
not  even 
retain 
them  as 
'  abstract 
ideas.' 


simple  feeling.  For  a  merely  sentient  being,  it  is  true — for 
one  who  did  not  think  upon  his  feelings — the  oppositions  of 
inner  and  outer,  of  subjective  and  objective,  of  fentastic  and 
real,  would  not  exist ;  but  neither  would  knowledge  or  a 
world  to  be  known.  That  such  oppositions,  misunderstood, 
may  be  a  heavy  burden  on  the  human  spirit,  the  experience 
of  current  controversy  and  its  spiritual  effects  might  alone 
suffice  to  convince  us ;  but  the  philosophical  deliverance  can 
only  lie  in  the  recognition  of  thought  as  their  author,  not  in 
the  attempt  to  obliterate  them  by  the  reduction  of  thought 
and  its  world  to  feeling — ^an  attempt  which  contradicts  itself, 
since  it  virtually  admits  their  existence  while  it  renders  them 
unaccountable. 

174.  That  Berkeley's  was  such  an  attempt,  looking  merely 
to  his  treatment  of  primary  qualities  and  abstract  ideas,  we 
certainly  could  not  doabt :  though,  since  language  does  not 
allow  of  its  consistent  statement,  and  Berkeley  was  quite 
ready  to  turn  the  exigencies  of  language  to  account,  passages 
logically  incompatible  with  it  may  easily  be  found  in  him. 
The  hasty  reader,  when  he  is  told  that  body  or  distance  are_ 
suggested  by  feelings  of  sight  and  touch  rather  than  immedi- 
ately" seen,  accepts  the"3octrine  without  scruple,  because  he 
supposes  that  which  is  suggested  to  be  a  present  reality, 
though  not  at  present  felt.  But  if  not  at  present  felt  it  is 
not  according  to  Berkeley  an  idea,  therefore  *  without  the 
mind,'  therefore  an  impossibility.^  That  which  is  suggested, 
then,  must  itself  be  a  feeling  which  consists  in  the  expecta- 
tion of  other  feelings.  Distance,  and  body,  as  suggested^  can  be 
no  more  than  such  an  expectation ;  and  as  actually  existing, 
no  more  than  the  actual  succession  of  the  expected  feelings — 
a  succession  of  which,  as  of  every  succession,  *  no  two  parts 
exist  together.' '  There  is  no  time,  then,  at  which  it  can  be 
said  that  distance  and  body  exist. 

175.  This,  it  may  seem,  however  inconsistent  with  the 
doctrine  of  primary  qualities,  is  little  more  than  the  result 
which  Locke  himself  comes  to  in  his  Fourth  Book ;  since,  if 
*  actual  present  Buccession'  forms  our  only  knowledge  of  real 
existence,  there  could  be  no  time  at  which  distance  and  body 
might  be  hnoivn  as  really  existing.     But  Locke,  as  we  have 

'  Reference  is  here  merely  made  to  and  '  relations  *  as  objects  of  knowledge 

the  doctrine  by  which  Berkeley  disposes  being  postponed, 
of  '  matter,'  the  consideration  of  its  re-  '  Locke,  Book  ii.  cliap.  xt.  see.  1. 

ooDcilability  with  his  doctrine  of  'spirits' 


WHAT  THEN  BECOMES  OF  THE  WORLD?  143 

seen,  is  able  to  save  mathematical,  though  not  physical,  know- 
ledge from  the  consequences  of  this  admission  by  his  doctrine 
of  abstract  ideas — ^  ideas  removed  in  our  thoughts  from  parti- 
cular existence* — whose  agreement  or  disagreement  is  stated 
in  propositions  which  *  concern  not  existence,'  and  for  that 
reason  may  be  general  without  becoming  either  uncertain  or 
unlnstructiYe.  This  doctrine  Berkeley  expressly  rejects  on 
the  ground  that  he  could  not  perceive  separately  that  which 
could  not  exist  separately  (*  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,' 
Introduction,  sec.  10) ;  a  ground  which  to  the  ordinary  reader 
seems  satisfactory  because  he  has  no  doubt,  and  Berkeley's 
instances  do  not  suggest  a  doubt,  as  to  the  present  existence 
of  *  individual  objects ' — this  man,  this  horse,  this  body.  But 
with  Berkeley  to  exist  means  to  be  felt  (^  Principles  of  Human 
Knowledge,'  sec.  3),  and  the  feelings,  which  I  name  a  body, 
being  successive,  its  existence  must  be  in  succession  likewise. 
The  limitation,  then,  of  possibility  of  *  conception'  by  x>ossi- 
bility  of  existence,  means  that  *  conception,'  too,  is  reduced 
to  a  succession  of  feelings. 

176.  Berkeley,  then,  as  a  consequence  of  the  methods  by  Onthe 
which  he  disposes  at  once  of  the  *real  existence '  and  *  abstract  "f™®  P^"" 
idea  of  matter,'  has  to  meet  the  following  questions : — How  p^^ent 
are  either  reality  or  knowledge  possible  without  permanent  'f^**{2°?. 
relations?  and.  How  can  feelings,  of  which  one  is  over  before  appear. 
the  next  begins,  constitute  or  represent  a  world  of  permanent 
relations?    The  difficulty  becomes  more  obvious,  tiiough  not 
more  serious,  when  the  relations  in  question  are  not  merely 
themselves  permanent,  as  are  those  between  natural  pheno- 
mena, but  are  relations  between  permanent  parts  like  those  of 
space.   It  is  for  this  reason  that  its  doctrine  of  geometry  is  the 
most  easily  assailable  point  of  the  ^  sensational '  philosophy. 
Locke  distinguishes  the  ideas  of  space  and  of  duration  as 
got,  the  one  from  the  permanent  parts  of  space,  the  other 
*from  the  fleeting  and  perpetually  perishing  parts  of  succes- 
sion.' *    He  afterwards  prefers  to  oppose  the  term '  expansion' 
to  *  duration,'  as  bringing  out  more  clearly  than  *  space '  the 
opposition  of  relation  between  permanent  facts  to  that  be- 
tween *  fleeting  successive  facts  which  never  exist  together.* 
How,  then,  can  a  consciousness,  consisting  simply  of  *  fleeting 
successive  facts,'  either  be  or  represent  that  of  which  the 
differentia  is  that  its  £B.cts  are  permanent  and  co- exist? 

'  Book  IT.  chap.  xiy.  sec.  1. 


«eeii« 


Hi  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

By  mftking  177.  This  crucial  question  in  regard  to  extension  does  not 
reiwionsof  ^^™  ®^®^  ^  ^^^^  Suggested  itself  to  Berkeley.  The  reason 
coloured  why  is  not  fer  to  seek.  Professor  Fraser,  in  his  valuable 
Berkeley  e<lltion,  represents  him  as  meaning  by  visible  extension 
represents  *  coloured  experience  in  sense/  and  by  tangible  extension 
relation  as  t  resistent  experience  in  sense.'  *  No  fault  can  be  found  with 
this  interpretation,  but  the  essential  question,  which  Berkeley 
does  not  fSeiirly  meet,  is  whether  the  experience  in  each  case 
is  complete  in  a  single  feeling  or  consists  in  a  succession  of 
feelings.  If  in  a  single  feeling,  it  clearly  is  not  extension,  as 
a  relation  between  parts,  at  all ;  if  in  a  succession  of  feelings, 
it  is  only  extension  because  a  synthetic  principle,  which  is 
not  itself  one  of  the  feelings,  but  equally  present  to  them  all, 
transforms  them  into  permanent  parts  of  which  each  quali- 
fies the  other  by  outwardness  to  it.  Berkeley  does  not  see 
the  necessity  of  such  a  principle,  because  he  allows  himself 
to  suppose  extension — at  any  rate  visible  extension — to  be 
constituted  by  a  single  feeling.  Having  first  pronounced  that 
the  proper  object  of  sight  is  colour,  he  quietly  substitutes  for 
this  situations  of  colour,  degrees  of  strength  and  faintness  in 
colour,  and  quantities  of  coloured  points,  as  if  these,  inter- 
changeably with  mere  colour,  were  properly  objects  of  sight 
and  perceived  in  single  acts  of  vision.  Now  if  by  object  of 
sight  were  meant  something  other  than  the  sensation  itself — 
something  which  to  a  thinking  being  it  suggests  as  its  cause 
— ^there  woidd  be  no  harm  in  this  language,  but  neither 
would  there  be  any  ground  for  saying  that  the  proper  object 
of  sight  is  colour,  for  distinguishing  visible  from  tangible 
extension,  or  for  denying  that  the  outwardness  of  body  to 
body  is  seen.  Such  restrictions  and  distinctions  have  no 
meaning,  unless  by  sight  is  meant  the  nervous  irritation, 
the  affection  of  the  visual  organ,  as  it  is  to  a  merely  feeling 
subject ;  yet  in  the  very  passages  where  he  makes  them,  by 
saying  that  we  see  situations  and  degrees  of  colour,  and  quan- 
tities of  coloured  points,  Berkeley  converts  sight  into  a  judg- 
ment of  extensive  and  intensive  quantity.  He  thus  fails  to 
discern  that  the  transition  from  colour  to  coloured  extension 
cannot  be  made  without  on  the  one  hand  either  the  presen- 

'  See  Erasei^B  Berkeley, '  Theory  of  otherwise  haye  thonght  necessary,  be- 

Virion/  note  42.    I  may  here  say  that  cause  Professor  Eraser  has  supplied,  in 

I  haye  gone  into  less  detail  in  my  ac^  the  way  of  explanation  of  it,  all  that  a 

ooant  of  Berkeley's  syatem  than  I  should  student  can  require. 


HOW  IS  GEOMETRY' 


?>?^^'rn\^v 


tation  of  sticcessiye  pictures  or  (whicli  comes  to  the  same) 
successive  acts  of  attention  to  a  single  picture,  and  on  the 
other  hand  a  synthesis  of  the  suecessive  presentations  as  mu- 
tuallj  qualified  parts  of  a  whole.  In  other  words,  he  ignores 
the  work  of  thought  involved  in  the  constitution  alike  of 
coloured  and  tangible  extension,  and  in  virtue  of  which  alone 
either  is  extension  at  all* 

178.  But  though  he  does  not  scruple  to  substitute  for  colour  SfcQl  he 
situations  and  quantities  of  coloured  points,  these  do  not  with  ^^^jg*^** 
him  constitute  space,  which  he  takes  according  to  Locke's  constituted 
account  of  it  to  be  *  distance  between  bodies  or  parts  of  the  ^^  ^  '^^* 
same  body.'  This,  according  to  his  *  Theory  of  Vision,'  is  feelings. 
tangible  extension,  and  this  again  is  alone  the  object  of  geo- 
metry.  As  in  that  treatise  a  difference  is  still  supposed  between 
tangible  extension  and  the  feeling  of  touch,  the  question  does 
not  there  necessarily  arise  whether  the  tactual  experience,  that 
constitutes  this  extension,  is  complete  in  a  single  feeling  or 
only  in  a  succession  of  feelings ;  but  when  in  the  subse- 
quent treatise  the  difference  is  effaced,  it  is  decided  by  impli- 
cation that  the  experience  is  successive :  ^  and  all  received 
modifications  of  the  theory,  which  assign  to  a  locomotive  or 
muscular  sense  the  office  which  Berkeley  roughly  assigned  to 
touch,  make  the  same  implication  still  more  clearly.  Now  in 
the  absence  of  any  recognition  of  a  synthetic  principle,  in 
relation  to  which  the  successive  experience  becomes  what  it 
is  not  in  itself,  this  means  nothing  else  than  that  space  is  a 
succession  of  feelings,  which  again  means  that  space  is  not 
space,  not  a  qualification  of  bodies  or  parts  of  body  by  mutual 
externality,  since  to  such  qualification  it  is  necessary  that 
bodies  or  their  parts  coexist.  Thus,  in  his  hurry  to  get  rid 
of  externality  as  independence  of  the  mind,  he  has  really  got 
rid  of  it  as  a  relation  between  bodies,  and  in  so  doing  (how- 
ever the  result  may  be  disguised)  has  logically  made  a  clean 
sweep  of  geometry  and  physics. 

179.  Of  this  result  he  himself  shows  no  suspicion.     He  if  so,  it  is 

professes  to  be  able,  without  violence  to  his  doctrine,  to  accept  "°^f,P*^ 

the  sciences  as  they  stand,  except  so  far  as  they  rest  upon  Berkeley 

the  needless  and  unmeaning  assumptions  (as  he  reckoned  thinks  it  is 

only  not 

'  *  Principles  of  Hnman  Knowledge/  able,  this  may  have  helped  to  disguise  '  P^^' 

flflc  44.    It  will  be  observed  that  in  from  him  the  fall  monstrosity  of  the   *P<^^ 

that  passage  Berkeley  uses  the  term  doctrine, '  space  is  a  succession  of  feel- 

*  distance,'  not '  space,'  and  though  with  ings,'  which,  stated  in  that  form,  must 

him  the  terms  are  strictly  interchange-  surely  have  scandalised  him. 

VOL.  I.  L 


14e  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION.  ^ 

Space  and  them)  of  f^e  space  and  its  infinite  divisibility.  The  troth 
Sm/ot**  seems  to  be  that— at  any  rate  in  the  state  of  mind  represented 
fell  by  his  earlier  treatises — ^he  was  only  able  to  work  on  the  lines 

logethop.  which  Locke  had  laid.  It  did  not  occur  to  him  to  treat  the 
primary  qualities  as  relations  constituted  by  thought,  because 
Locke  had  not  done  so.  Locke  having  treated  them  as  ex- 
ternal to  the  mind,  Berkeley  does  so  likewise,  and  for  that 
reason  feels  that  they  must  be  got  rid  of.  The  mode  of  rid- 
dance, again,  was  virtually  determined  for  him  by  Locke. 
Locke  having  admitted  that  they  copied  themselves  in  feelings, 
the  untenable  element  in  this  supposition  had  only  to  be 
dropped  and  they  became  feelings  simply.  It  is  thus  oidy  so  far 
as  space  is  supposed  to  exist  after  a  mode  of  which,  according 
to  Locke  himself,  sense  could  take  no  copy — Le.  as  exclusive 
not  merely  of  all  colour  but  of  all  body,  and  as  infinitely  di- 
visible— ^that  Berkeley  becomes  aware  of  its  incompatibility 
with  his  doctrine.  Pure  space,  or  *  vacuum,'  to  him  means 
space  liiat  can  not  be  touched — ^a  tangible  extension  that 
is  not  tangible — and  is  therefore  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
The  notion  that,  though  not  touched,  it  might  be  seen,  he 
excludes,'  apparently  for  the  same  reason  which  prevents 
him  from  allowing  visible  extension  to  be  space  at  all ;  the 
reason,  namely,  that  there  is  no  ^  outness'  or  relation  of  ex- 
ternality between  the  parts  of  such  extension.  The  fact  that 
ithere  can  be  no  such  relation  between  the  successive  feelings 
'  ]  which  alone,  according  to  him,  constitute  *  tangible  extension,' 
he  did  not  see  to  be  equally  &tal  to  the  latter  being  in  any 
true  sense  space.  In  other  words,  he  did  not  see  that  the 
test  of  reduction  to  feeling,  by  which  he  disposed  of  the 
vacutimy  disposed  of  space  altogether.  If  he  had,  he  would 
have  understood  that  space  and  body  were  intelligible  rela- 
tions, which  can  be  thought  of  apart  from  the  feelings  which 
through  them  become  the  world  that  we  know,  since  it  is 
they  that  are  the  conditions  of  these  feelings  becoming  a 
knowledge,  not  the  feelings  that  are  the  condition  of  the 
relations  being  known.  Whether  they  can  be  thought  of 
apart  from  each  other — whether  the  simple  relation  of  exter- 
nality between  parts  of  a  whole  can  be  thought  of  without 
the  parts  being  considered  as  solid — is  of  course  a  further 
question,  and  one  which  Berkeley  cannot  be  said  properly  to 
discuss  at  all,  since  the  abstraction  of  space  from  body  to  him 

>  *  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge/  sec  116. 


SPACE  AND  GOD.  147 

meant  its  abstraction  from  feelings  of  touch.  The  answer  to 
it  ceases  to  be  difficult  as  soon  as  the  question  is  properly 
stated. 

180.  As  with  yacuum,  so  with  infinite  divisibility.     Once  Berkoiey 
let  it  be  understood  that  extension  is  constituted  by  the  rela-  ^^Jsposj"  ol 

SDftco  for 

tion  of  externality  between  homogeneous  parts,  and  it  follows  fear  of 
that  there  can  be  no  least  part  of  extension,  none  that  does  ^°^^°8 
Dot  itself  consist  of  parts ;  in  other  words,  that  it  is  infinitely 
divisible  :  just  as  conversely  it  follows  that  there  can  be  no 
hut  part  of  it,  not  having  another  outside  it ;  in  other  words, 
that  (to  use  Locke's  phrase)  it  is  infinitely  addible.  Doubt- 
less, as  Berkeley  held,  there  is  a  ^  minimum  visibile ';  but  this 
means  that  there  are  conditions  under  which  any  seen  colour 
disappears,  and  disappearing,  ceases  to  be  known  under  the 
relation  of  extension ;  but  it  is  only  through  a  confasion  of 
the  relation  with  the  colour  that  the  disappearance  of  the 
latter  is  thought  to  be  a  disappearance  of  so  much  extension.^ 
It  was,  in  short,  the  same  failure  to  recognise  the  true  ideality 
of  space,  as  a  relation  constituted  by  thought,  that  on  the  one 
hand  made  its  *  purity '  and  infinity  unmeaning  to  Berkeley, 
and  on  the  other  made  him  think  that,  if  pure  {sc.  irreducible  to 
feelings)  and  infinite,it  must  limit  the  Divine  perfection,either 
as  being  itself  God  or  as  ^  something  beside  God  which  is 
eternal,  uncreated,  and  infinite'  (^  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge,' sec.  117).  Fear  of  this  result  set  him  upon  that 
method  of  resolving  space,  and  with  it  the  world  of  nature, 
into  sequent  feelings,  which,  if  it  had  been  really  susceptible 
of  logical  expression,  would  at  best  have  given  him  nothing 
but  a  fUya  $Sov  for  God.  If  he  had  been  in  less  of  a  huny  with 
his  philosophy,  he  might  have  found  that  the  current  tendency 
to  *  bind  Qod  in  nature  or  diffuse  in  space '  required  to  be  met 
by  a  sounder  than  his  boyish  idealism — by  an  idealism  which 
gives  space  its  due,  but  reflects  that  to  make  space  God,  or  a 
limitation  on  God,  is  to  subject  thought  itself  to  the  most 
superficial  of  the  relations  by  which  it  forms  the  world  that 
it  knows* 

181.  So  far  we  have  only  considered  Berkeley's  reduction  flow  he 
of  primary   qualities,   supposed  to  be  sensible,  to  sensations  ^^^?  V!^ 
as  it  affects  the  qualities  themselves,  rather  than  as  it  affects  Sf^^nenf 
the  possibility  ofuniversal  judgments  about  them.   If,  indeed,  kuowladgii 

>  The  same  remark  of  coune  applief ,      Ungibile.'    See  Mow,  paragraphs  265 
mmiaHs  muiandii,  to    the    '  mimmum      and  26C. 


148  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

as  we  have  found,  such  reduction  reallj  amonnta  to  the  abso- 
lute obliteration  of  the  qualities,  no  fui-ther  queation  can 
remain  as  to  the  possibility  of  general  knowledge  concerning 
them.    As  Berkeley,  however,  did  not  admit  the  obliteration, 
the  farther  question  did  remain  for  him  :  and  the  condition 
of  his  plausibly  answering  it  was  that  he  should  recognise 
in  the  ^idea,'  as  subject  of  predication,  that  intelligible  qualifi- 
cation by  relation  which  he  did  not  recognise  in  it  simply  as 
*idea,'  and  which  essentially  diflFerences  it   from  feeling 
proper.     If  any  particular  *  tangible  extension,*  e.g.  a  right- 
angled  triangle,  is  only  a  feeling,   or  in  Berkeley's   own 
language,  ^  a  fleeting  perishable  passion ' '  not  existing  at  all, 
even  as  an  *  abstract  idea,'  except  when  some  one's  tactual 
organs  are  being  aflfected  in   a  certain  way — ^what  are  we 
to  make  of  such  a  general  truth  as  that  the  square  on  its 
base  is  always  equal  to  the  squares  on  its  sides  9    Omitting 
all  difficulties  about  the  convertibility  of  a  figure  with  a 
feeling,  we  find  two  questions  still  remain — How  such  sepa- 
ration can  be  made  of  the  figure  from  the  other  conditions 
of  the  tactual  experience  as  that  propositions   should  be 
possible  which  concern  the  figure  simply ;  and  how  a  single 
case  of  tactual  experience — that  in  which  the  mathematician 
finds  a  feeling  called  a  right-angled  triangle  followed  by 
another  which  he  calls  equality  between  the  squares,  &c. — 
leads  in  the  absence  of  any  ^necessary  connexion'  to  the 
expectation  that  the  sequence  will  always  be  the  same.'    The 
difficulty  becomes  the  more  striking  when  it  is  remembered 
that  though  the  geometrical  proposition  in  question,  according 
to  Berkeley,  concerns  the  tangible,  the  experience  which 
suggests  it  is  merely  visual. 
His  theory       182.  Berkeley's  answer  to  these  questions  must  be  gathered 
Rils"'^""    ^^^  ^is  theory  of  general  names.     *  It  is,  I  know,'  he  says, 
*a  point  much  insisted  on,  that  all  knowledge  and  demonstra- 
tion are  about  universal  notions,  to  which  I  fully  agree :  but 
then  it  does  not  appear  to  me  that  those  notions  are  formed 
by  abstraction — universality y  so  far  as  I  can  comprehend,  not 
consisting  in  the  absolute  positive  nature  or  conception  of 
anything,   but  in  the  relation  it  bears  to  the  particulars 
signified  or  represented  by  it ;  by  virtue  whereof  it  is  that 
things,  names,  or  notions,  being  in  their  own  nature  par^ 
ticular^  are  rendered  universal.     Thus,  when  I  demonstrate 
>  *  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,'  sec.  89.        *  See  aboFO,  paragraph  122. 


.   fleas  lie 
m  zelation. 


BERKELEY  ON  UNIVERSALS.  149 

any  proposition  concerning  triangles,  it  is  to  be  supposed 
that  I  have  in  view  the  universal  idea  of  a  triangle ;  which  is 
not  to  be  understood  as  if  I  could  frame  an  idea  of  a  triangle 
which  was  neither  equilateral  nor  scalene  nor  equicrural; 
but  only  that  the  particular  triangle  I  considered,  whether  of 
this  or  that  sort  it  matters  not,  doth  equally  stand  for  and 
represent  all  rectilinear  triangles  whatsoever,  and  is  in  that 
sense  universal.'  Thus  it  is  that  ^  a  man  may  consider  a 
figure  merely  as  triangular/  (*  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge,' Introd.  sees.  15  and  16.) 

188.  In  this  passage  appear  the  beginnings  of  a  process  of  value,  as 
of  thought  which,  if  it  had  been  systematically  pursued  by  ^ply^^s 
Berkeley,  might  have  brought  him  to  understand  by  thes^ersalityof 
*  percipi,'  to  which  he  pronounced  *  esse '  equivalent,  defi-  J®^,  Ji?J„ 
nitely  the  ^  intelligi.'  As  it  stands,  the  result  of  the  passage  4 
merely  is  that  the  triangle  (for  instance)  ^  in  its  own  nature,' 
because  *  particular,'  is  not  a  possible  subject  of  general  pre- 
dication or  reasoning:  that  it  is  so  only  as  ^considered'  under 
a  relation  of  resemblance  to  other  triangles  and  by  such  con- 
sideration universalized.  'In  its  ovm  nature,'  or  as  a  'par- 
ticular idea,'  the  triangle,  we"  must  suppose,  is  so  much 
tangible  (or  visible,  as  symbolical  of  tangible)  extension,  and 
therefore  according  to  Berkeley  a  feeUng.  But  a  relation,  as 
he  virtually  admits,'  is  neither  a  feeling  nor  felt.  The  triangle, 
then,  as  considered  under  relation  and  thus  a  possible  subject 
of  general  propositions,  is  quite  other  than  the  triangle  in  its 
own  nature.  This,  of  course,  is  so  far  merely  a  virtual  repeti- 
tion of  Locke's*  embarrassing  doctrine  that  real  things  are  not 
the  things  which  we  speak  of,  and  which  are  the  subject  of 
our  sciences ;  but  it  is  a  repetition  with  two  fruitful  differences 
— one,  that  the  thing  in  its  'absolute  positive  nature'  is  more 
explicitly  identified  with  feeling;  the  other,  that  the  process, 
by  which  the  thing  thought  and  spoken  of  is  supposed  to  be 
derived  from  the  real  thing,  is  no  longer  one  of '  abstraction,' 
but  consists  in  consideration  of  relation.  It  is  true  that  with 
Berkeley  the  mere  feeling  has  a  'positive  nature'  apart  from 
considered  relations,'  and  that  the  considered  relation,  by 
which  the  feeling  is  universalised,  is  only  that  of  resemblance 
between  properties  supposed  to  exist  independently  of  it.  The 
particular  triangle,'  reducible  to  feelings  of  touch,  has  its 

■  See  *  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,'  sec  89.    (2nd  edit) 
'  See  below,  puxagraph  298. 


€ 


150 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION, 


Bathe 
faodM 
that  each 
ideaheeft 
positive 
nature 
apart  from 
lelation. 


triang^olarity  (we  mast  suppose)  simply  as  a  feeling.  It  is 
only  the  resemblance  between  the  triangnlarity  in  this  and 
other  figores — ^not  the  triangularity  itself— that  is  a  relation, 
and,  as  a  relation,  not  felt  but  considered ;  or  in  Berkeley's 
language,  something  of  which  we  have  not  properly  an  *  idea' 
but  a  *  notion.'  * 

184.  But  though  Berkeley  only  renders  explicit  the  diffi- 
culties impUdt  in  Locke's  doctrine  of  ideas,  that  is  itself  a 
great  step  taken  towards  disposing  of  them.  Once  let  the 
equivocation  between  sensible  qualities  and  sensations  be  got 
rid  of — once  let  it  be  admitted  that  the  triangle  in  its  absolute 
nature,  as  opposed  to  the  triangle  considered,  is  merely  a 
feeling,  and  that  relations  are  not  feelings  or  felt — and  the 
question  must  soon  arise.  What  in  the  absence  of  all  relation 
remains  to  be  the  absolute  nature  of  the  triangle  9  It  is  a 
question  which  ultimately  admits  of  but  one  answer.  The 
triangularity  of  the  given  single  figure  must  be  allowed  to  be 
just  as  much  a  relation  as  the  resemblance,  consisting  in 
triangularity,  between  it  and  other  figures ;  and  if  a  relation, 
then  not  properly  felt,  but  understood.  The  *  particular' 
triangle,  if  by  that  is  meant  the  triangle  as  subject  of  a 
singular  proposition,  is  no  more  ^  particular  in  time,'  no  more 
co&stituted  by  the  occurrence  of  a  feeling,  than  is  the  triangle 
as  subject  of  a  general  proposition.  It  really  exists  as  con- 
stituted by  relation,  and  therefore  only  as  *  considered '  or 
nnderstood.  In  its  existence,  as  in  the  consideration  of  it, 
the  relations  indicated  by  the  terms  '  equilateral,  equicrural 
and  scalene,'  presuppose  the  relation  of  triangularity,  not  it 
them ;  and  for  that  reason  it  can  be  considered  apart  from 
them,  though  not  they  apart  from  it,  without  any  breach 
between  that  which  is  considered  and  that  which  really 
exists.  Thus,  too,  it  becomes  explicable  that  a  single  expe- 
riment should  warrant  a  universal  affirmation;  that  the 
mathematician,  having  once  found  as  the  result  of  a  certain 
comparison  of  magnitudes  that  the  square  on  the  hypothenuse 
is  equal  to  the  square  on  the  sides,  without  waiting  for  re- 
peated experience  at  once  substitutes  for  the  singular  propo- 
sition, which  states  his  discovery,  a  general  one.     K  the 


'  '  PHnciplee  of  Human  Knowledge/ 
Rid»  This  perhaps  is  the  hest  place 
for  saying  that  it  is  not  firom  any  want 
of  respect  for  Dr.  Stirling  that  I  habitn- 
•lly  use  'notion'  in  the  loose  popular 


way  which  he  counts  '  barbarous/  but 
beaiuse  the  barbarism  is  so  ^reyalent 
that  it  seems  best  to  submit  to  it,  and  to 
use  'conception'  as  the  equivalent  of 
the  German '  Bfgriff/ 


KINDS  OF  IDEALISM.  151 

ungear  proposition  stated  a  sensible  event  or  the  occurrence 
of  a  feeling,  snch  substitution  would  be  inexplicable :  for  if 
that  were  the  true  account  of  the  singular  proposition,  a 
general  one  could  but  express  such  expectation  of  the  recur- 
rence of  the  event  as  repeated  experience  of  it  can  alone  give* 
Bat  a  relation  is  not  contingent  with  the  contingency  of 
feeling.  It  is  permanent  with  the  permanence  of  the  com- 
bining and  comparing  thought  which  alone  constitutes  it ; 
and  for  that  reason,  whether  it  be  recognised  as  the  result 
of  a  mathematical  construction  or  of  a  crucial  experiment  in 
physics,  the  proposition  which  states  it  must  already  be 
virtually  universal. 

185.  Of  such  a  doctrine  Berkeley  is  rather  the  unconscious  Tzaceaof 
forerunner  than  the  intelligent  prophet.  It  is  precisely  upon  ^J^^SS-' 
the  question  whether,  or  how  far,  he  recognised  the  constitu-  ism. 
tion  of  things  by  intelligible  relations,  that  the  interpretation 
of  his  early  (which  is  his  only  developed)  idealism  rests.  Is  it 
such  idealism  as  Hume's,  or  such  idealism  as  that  adum- 
brated in  some  passages  of  his  ovm  '  Siris '  P  Is  the  idea, 
which  is  real,  according  to  him  a  feeling  or  a  conception  ? 
Has  it  a  nature  of  its  own,  consisting  simply  in  its  being  felt, 
and  which  we  afterwards  for  purposes  of  our  own  consider  in 
various  relations;  or  does  the  nature  consist  only  in  relations, 
which  again  imply  the  action  of  a  mind  that  is  eternal — 
present  to  that  which  is  in  succession,  but  not  in  succession 
itself?  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  this  question  in  its  full 
significance  never  presented  itself  to  Berkeley,  at  least 
during  the  period  represented  by  his  philosophical  treatises. 
His  early  idealism,  as  we  learn  from  the  commonplace-book 
brought  to  light  by  Professor  Eraser,  was  merely  a  cruder 
form  of  Hume's.  By  the  time  of  the  publication  of  the 
*  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge'  he  had  learnt  that,  unless 
this  doctrine  was  to  efface  '  spirit '  as  well  as  ^  matter,'  he 
must  modify  it  by  the  admission  of  a  ^  thing '  that  was  not 
an  'idea,'  and  of  which  the  ^esse'  was  'percipere'  not 
'percipi.'  This  admission  carried  with  it  the  distinction 
between  the  object  felt  and  the  object  known,  between  4dea* 
and  'notion' — a  distinction  which  was  more  clearly  marked 
in  the  'Dialogues.'  Of  'spirit'  we  could  have  a  'notion,' 
though  not  an  '  idea.'  But  it  was  only  in  the  second  edition 
of  the  '  Principles '  that '  relation'  was  put  along  vrith '  spirit,* 
as  that  which  could  be  known  but  which  was  no  '  idea;'  and 


152 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


His  way  of 

dealing 

with 

physical 

truths. 


If  they 
imply  per- 
manent 
relations, 
his  theory 
properly 
excludes 
them. 


then  without  any  recogp:iition  of  the  fact  that  the  whole  re- 
ductiou  of  primary  qualities  to  mere  ideas  was  thereby 
invalidated.  The  objects,  with  which  the  mathematician 
deals,  are  throughout  treated  as  in  their  own  nature  '  par- 
ticular ideas/  into  the  constitution  of  which  relation  does  not 
enter  at  all ;  in  other  words,  as  successive  feelings. 

186.  If  the  truths  of  mathematics  seemed  to  Berkeley  ex- 
plicable on  this  supposition,  those  of  the  physical  sciences 
were  not  likely  to  seem  less  so.  As  long  as  the  relations 
with  which  these  sciences  deal  are  relations  between  *  sensible 
objects,'  he  does  not  notice  that  they  are  relations,  and 
therefore  not  feelings  or  felt,  at  aU.  He  treats  felt  things  as 
if  the  same  as  feelings,  and  ignores  the  relations  altogether. 
Thus  a  so-called  '  sensible '  motion  causes  him  no  difficulty. 
He  would  be  content  to  say  that  it  was  a  succession  of  ideas, 
not  perceiving  that  motion  implies  a  relation  between  spaces 
or  moments  as  successively  occupied  by  something  that 
remains  one  with  itself — a  relation  which  a  mere  sequence  of 
feelings  could  neither  constitute  nor  of  itself  suggest.  It  is 
only  about  a  motion  which  does  not  profess  to  be  *  seen,*  such 
as  the  motion  of  the  earth,  that  any  question  is  raised — ^a 
question  easily  disposed  of  by  the  consideration  that  in  a  diffe- 
rent position  we  should  see  it.  *  The  question  whether  the 
earth  moves  or  not  amounts  in  reality  to  no  more  than  this,  to 
wit,  whether  we  have  reason  to  conclude  from  what  hath  been 
observed  by  astronomers,  that  if  we  were  placed  in  such  and 
such  circumstances,  and  such  or  such  a  position  and  distance 
both  from  the  earth  and  sun,  we  should  perceive  the  former  to 
move  among  the  choir  of  the  planets,  and  appearing  in  all 
respects  like  one  cf  them :  and  this  by  the  established  rules 
of  nature,  which  we  have  no  reason  to  mistrust,  is  reasonably 
collected  from  the  phenomena '  (*  Principles  of  Human  Know- 
ledge,' sec.  58).* 

187.  Now  this  passage  clearly  does  not  mean — as  it  ought 
to  mean  if  the  *  esse '  of  the  motion  were  the  ^percipi^  by  us — 
that  the  motion  of  the  earth  would  begin  as  soon  as  we  were 
there  to  see  it.  It  means  that  it  is  now  going  on  as  an  ^  es- 
tablished law  of  nature,'  which  may  be  *  collected  from  the 
phenomena.'  In  other  words,  it  means  that  our  successive 
feelings  are  so  related  to  each  other  as  determined  by  one 
present  and  permanent  system,  on  which  not  they  only  but 

1  Cf.  *Dialogae0|'  page  147,  in  Ftof.  Fiasex's  edition. 


IDEALISM  WHICH  OBLITERATES  THE  REAL,         153 

all  possible  feelings  depend,  that  by  a  certain  set  of  them  we  He  rap- 
are  led — ^not  to  expect  a  recurrence  of  them  in  like  order  ^^^^ 
according  to  the  laws  of  association,  but,  what  is  the  exact  decree  that 
reverse  of  this — ^to  infer  that  certain  other  feelings,  of  which  g^^®^'"* 
we  have  no  experience,  would  now  occur  to  us  if  certain  con-  follow 
ditions  of  situation  on  our  part  were  fulfiOQed,  because  the  *"other. 
*  ordo  ad  universum,'  of  which  these  feelings  would  be  the 
'ordo  ad  nos,'  does  now  obtain.     But  though  Berkeley's 
words  mean  this  for  us,  they  did  not  mean  it  for  him.    That 
such  relation — merely  intelligible,  or  according  to  his  phrase- 
ology not  an  idea  or  object  of  an  idea  at  all,  as  he  must  have 
admitted  it  to  be — gives  to  our  successive  feelings  the  only 
^nature'  that  they  possess,  he  never  recognised.     By  the 
relation  of  idea  to  idea,  as  he  repeatedly  tells  us,  he  meant 
not  a  ^necessary  connexion,'  i,6.  not  a  relation  without  which 
neither  idea  would  be  what  it  is,  but  such  de  facto  sequence  of 
one  upon  the  other  as  renders  the  occurrence  of  one  the  un- 
failing but  arbitrary  sign  that  the  other  is  coming.     It  is 
thus  according  to  Him  (and  here  Hume  merely  followed  suit) 
that  feelings  are  symbolical — symbolical  not  of  an  order 
other  than  the  feelings  and  which  accounts  for  them,  but 
simply  of  feelings  to  follow.    To  Berkeley,  indeed,  unlike 
Hume,  the  sequence  of  feelings  symbolical  of  each  other  is 
also  symbolical  of  something  farther,  viz.  the  mind  of  Qod : 
but  when  we  examine  what  this  *  mind '  means,  we  find  that 
it  is  not  an  intelligible  order  by  which  our  feelings  may  be 
interpreted,  or  the  spiritual  subject  of  such  an  order,  but 
simply  the  arbitrary  will  of  a  creator  that  this  feeling  shall 
follow  that. 

188.  Such  a  doctrine  could  not  help  being  at  once  confused  Locke  had 
in  its  account  of  reality,  and  insecure  in  its  doctrine  alike  of  ^^^^!^ 
the  human  spirit  and  of  God.   On  the  recognition  of  relations  relation  of 
as  constituting  the  natwre  of  ideas  rests  the  possibility  of  any  ^^^"^ 
tenable  theory  of  their  reality.    An  isolated  idea  could  be  body. 
neither  real  nor  unreal.    Apart  from  a  definite  order  of  rela- 
tion we  may  suppose  (if  we  like)  that  it  would  be,  but  it  would 
certainly  not  be  real ;  and  as  little  could  it  be  unreal,  since 
unreality  can  only  result  from  the  confusion  in  our  conscious- 
ness of  one  order  of  relation  with  another.     It  is  diversity  of 
relations  that  distinguishes,  for  instance,  these  letters  as  they 
now  appear  on  paper  from  the  same  as  I  imagine  them  with 
xny  eyes  shut)  giving  each  sort  its  own  reality  :  just  as  upon 


164  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

Liveliness  confusion  with  the  other  each  alike  becomes  nnreal.  Thua^ 
i^d^nce  of  ^^^o^l^  "^^  Locke  simple  ideas  ore  necessarily  real,  we  soon 
thisrela-  find  that  even  according  to  him  they  are  not  truly  so  in  their 
^^^  simplicity,  but  only  as  related  to  an  external  thing  producing 

them.  He  is  right  enough,  however  inconsistent  with  him- 
self, in  making  relation  constitute  reality ;  wrong  in  limiting 
this  prerogative  to  the  one  relation  of  externality.  When 
he  afterwards,  in  virtual  contradiction  to  this  limitation,  finds 
the  reality  of  moral  and  mathematical  ideas  just  in  that  sole 
relation  to  the  mind,  as  its  products,  which  he  had  previously 
made  the  source  of  aU  imreality,  he  forces  upon  us  the  expla- 
nation which  he  does  not  himself  give,  that  unreality  does  not 
lie  in  either  relation  as  opposed  to  the  other,  but  in  the  con- 
cision of  any  relation  with  another.  It  is  for  lack  of  this 
explanation  that  Locke  himself,  as  we  have  seen,  finds  in  the 
liveliness  and  involuntariness  of  ideas  the  sole  and  sufficient 
tests  (not  canstitfients)  of  their  reality ;  though  they  are  obvi- 
ously tests  which  put  the  dreams  of  a  man  in  a  fever  upon 
the  same  footing  with  the  ^  impressions'  of  a  man  awake,  and 
would  ofben  prove  that  unreal  after  dinner  which  had  been 
proved  real  before.  There  is  a  well-known  story  of  a  man 
who  in  a  certain  state  of  health  commonly  saw  a  particular 
gory  apparition,  but  who,  knowing  its  origin,  used  to  have 
himself  bled  till  it  disappeared.  The  reality  of  the  apparition 
lay,  he  knew,  in  some  relation  between  the  circulation  of  his 
blood  and  his  organs  of  sight,  in  distinction  from  the  reality- 
existing  in  the  normal  relations  of  his  visual  organs  to  the 
light :  and  in  his  idea,  accordingly,  there  was  nothing  unreal, 
because  he  did  not  confuse  the  one  relation  with  the  other. 
Locke's  doctrine,  however,  would  allow  of  no  distinction 
between  the  apparition  as  it  was  for  such  a  man  and  as  it 
would  be  for  one  who  interpreted  it  as  an  actual  ^  ghost.' 
However  interpreted,  the  liveliness  and  the  involuntariness  of 
the  idea  remain  the  same,  as  does  its  relation  to  an  efficient 
cause.  If  in  order  to  its  reality  the  cause  must  be  an  '  out- 
ward body,'  then  it  is  no  more  real  when  rightly,  than  when 
wrongly,  interpreted ;  while  on  the  ground  of  liveliness  and 
involuntariness  it  is  as  real  when  taken  for  a  ghost  as  when 
referred  to  an  excess  of  blood  in  the  head. 
Berkelej  189.  As  has  been  pointed  out  above,  it  is  in  respect  not 
rc^j^**"'*  of  the  *  ratio  cognoscendi'  but  of  the  *  ratio  essendi'  that 
only  eub-    Berkeley's  doctrine  of  reality  differs  from  Locke's.  With  him 


AND  WITH  THE  BEAL,  OOD.  156 

it  in  not  as  an  effect  of  an  outward  body,  but  as  an  immediate  f^^'j"^ 
effect  of  God,  that  an  *idea  of  sense*  is  real.  Just  as  with  Itody/**' 
Locke  real  ideas  and  matter  serve  each  to  explain  the  other, 
so  with  Berkeley  do  real  ideas  and  God.  If  he  is  asked, 
What  is  Gk>d  P  the  answer  is,  He  is  the  efficient  cause  of  real 
ideas;  if  he  is  asked.  What  are  real  ideas?  the  answer  is. 
Those  which  God  produces,  as  opposed  to  those  which  we 
make  for  oursclyes.  To  the  inevitable  objection,  that  this  is 
a  logical  see-saw,  no  effective  answer  can  be  extracted  from 
Berkeley  but  this — that  we  have  subjective  tests  of  the  reality 
of  ideas  apart  from  a  knowledge  of  their  cause.  In  his 
account  of  these  Berkeley  only  differs  from  Locke  in  adding 
to  the  qualifications  of  liveliness  and  involuntariness  those  of 
^  steadiness,  order,  and  coherence '  in  the  ideas.  This  addition 
may  mean  either  a  great  deal  or  very  little.  To  us  it  may 
mean  that  the  distinction  of  real  and  unreal  is  one  that 
applies  not  to  feelings  but  to  the  conceived  relations  of  feel- 
ings ;  not  to  events  as  such,  but  to  the  intellectual  interpre- 
tation of  them.  The  occurrence  of  a  feeling  taken  by  itself 
(it  may  be  truly  said)  is  neither  coherent  nor  incoherent; 
nor  can  the  sequence  of  feelings  one  upon  another  with  any 
significance  be  called  coherence,  since  in  that  case  an  inco- 
herence would  be  as  impossible  as  any  failure  in  the  sequence. 
As  little  can  we  mean  by  such  coherence  an  usual,  by  inco- 
herence an  unusual,  sequence  of  feelings.  K  we  did,  every 
sequence  not  before  experienced — such,  for  instance,  as  is 
exhibited  by  a  new  scientific  experiment — ^being  unusual, 
would  have  to  be  pronounced  incoherent,  and  therefore 
unreaL  Coherence,  in  short,  we  may  conclude,  is  only 
predicable  of  a  system  of  relations,  not  felt  but  conceived ; 
while  incoherence  arises  from  the  attempt  of  an  imperfect 
intelligence  to  think  an  object  under  relations  which  cannot 
ultimately  be  held  together  in  thought.  The  qualification 
then  of  *  ideas  *  as  coherent  has  in  truth  no  meaning  unless 
^idea'  be  taken  to  mean  not  feeling  but  conception :  and  thus 
understood,  the  doctrine  that  coherent  ideas  a/re  (Berkeley 
happily  excludes  the  notion  that  they  merely  represent)  the 
real,  amounts  to  a  clear  identification  of  the  real  with  the 
world  of  conception. 

190.  If  such  idealism  were  Berkeley's,  his  inference  from  Not  rfH 
the  *  ideality'  of  the  real  to  spirit  and  God  would  be  more  gw^ngUi© 
valid  than  it  is.      To  have  got  rid  of  the  notion  that  the  ^^m^t^ 


166  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

faitaUigible  world  first  exists  and  then  is  thought  of— to  have  seen  that 
h^^uld  ^*  ^^y  really  exists  as  thought  of— is  to  have  taken  the  first 
not  regud  step  in  the  only  possible  *  proof  of  the  being  of  God,'  as  the 
M^ect  of*  self-conscious  subject  in  relation  to  which  alone  an  intelli- 
it.  gible  world  can  exist,  and  the  presence  of  which  in  us  is  the 

condition  of  our  knowing  it.'  But  there  is  nothing  to  show 
that  in  adopting  coherence  as  one  test,  among  others,  of  the 
reality  of  ideas,  he  attached  to  it  any  of  the  significance 
exhibited  aboye*  He  adopted  it  from  ordinary  language 
without  considering  how  it  affected  his  view  of  tiie  world  as 
a  succession  of  feelings.  That  still  remained  to  him  a  suffi- 
cient account  of  the  world,  even  when  he  treated  it  as  affording 
intuitive  certainty  of  a  soul  *  naturally  immortal,'  and  de- 
monstrative certainty  of  God.  He  is  not  aware,  while  he 
takes  his  doctrine  of  such  certainty  from  Locke,  that  he  has 
left  out,  and  not  replaced,  the  only  solid  ground  for  it  which 
Locke's  system  suggested. 
HisTiewof  Idl^*  1^^  Boul  or  self,  as  he  describes  it,  does  not  differ 
theoouias  from  Locke's  thinking  substance,*  except  that,  having  got 
immortal;  ^^  ^^  *  extended  matter '  altogether,  he  cannot  admit  with 
Locke  any  possibility  of  the  soul's  being  extended,  and, 
having  satisfied  himself  that  *  time  was  nothing  abstracted 
from  the  succession  of  ideas  in  the  mind,'*  he  was  clear  that 
'  the  soul  always  thinks ' — since  the  time  at  which  it  did  not 
think,  being  abstracted  from  a  succession  of  ideas,  would  be 
no  time  at  all.  A  soul  which  is  necessarily  unextended  and 
therefore  *  indiscerptible,'  and  without  which  there  would  be 
no  time,  he  reckons  ^  naturally  immortaL' 
Endiees  1^2.  Upon  this  the  remark  must  occur  that,  if  the  fact  of 

Bacoession  being  unextended  constituted  immortality,  all  sounds  and 
is  not  i^  smeUs  must  be  immortal,  and  that  the  inseparability  of  time 
mortality  from  the  succession  of  feelings  may  prove  that  succession 
in  tru©  endless,  but  proves  no  immortality  of  a  soul  unless  there  be 
one  self-conscious  subject  of  that  succession,  identical  with 
itself  throughout  it.  To  the  supposition  of  there  being  such 
a  subject,  which  Berkeley  virtually  makes,  his  own  mode  of 
disposing  of  matter  suggested  ready  objections.  In  Locke, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  two  opposite  'things,'  thinking  and 
material,  always  appear  in  strict  correlativity,  each  repre- 
senting (though  he  was  not  aware  of  this)  the  same  logical 

*  See aboTOi paragraphs  146 and  149-         *  'Principles  of  Human  Knowledge/ 
152.  sec.  98. 


IS  NOT  THIS  IDEALISM  BERKELETS  ?  167 

necessity  of  substantiation.  *  Sensation  convinces  ns  that  Berkeley's 
there  are  solid  extended  substances,  and  reflection  that  there  nJ^^®*^ 
are  tliinking  ones.'  These  are  not  two  convictions,  however,  fatal  to  a 
but  one  conviction,  representing  one  and  the  same  essential  ^]J^"' 
condition  of  knowledge.  Such  logical  necessity  indeed  is 
misinterpreted  when  made  a  ground  for  believing  the  real 
existence  either  of  a  multitude  of  independent  things,  for 
everything  is  a  *  retainer*  to  everything  else  ;*  or  of  a  sepa- 
ration of  the  thinking  from  the  material  substance,  since, 
according  to  Locke's  own  showing,  they  at  least  everywhere 
overlap ;  *  or  of  an  absolutely  last  substance,  which  because 
last  would  be  unknowable :  but  it  is  evidence  of  the  action  of 
a  synthetic  principle  of  self-consciousness  without  which 
all  reference  of  feelings  to  mutually-qualified  subjects  and 
objects,  and  therefore  all  knowledge,  would  be  impossible. 
It  is  idle,  however,  with  Berkeley  so  to  ignore  the  action  of 
this  principle  on  the  one  side  as  to  pronounce  the  material 
world  a  mere  succession  of  feelings,  and  so  to  take  it  for 
granted  on  the  other  as  to  assert  that  every  feeling  implies 
relation  to  a  conscious  substance.  Upon  such  a  method  the 
latter  assertion  has  nothing  to  rest  on  but  an  appeal  to  the 
individual's  consciousness — ^an  appeal  which  avails  as  much 
or  as  little  for  material  as  for  thinking  substance,  and,  in 
face  of  the  apparent  fact  that  with  a  knock  on  the  head  the 
conscious  independent  substance  may  disappear  altogether, 
cannot  hold  its  own  against  the  suggestion  that  the  one  sub- 
stance no  less  than  the  other  is  reducible  to  a  series  of  feelings, 
so  closely  and  constantly  sequent  on  each  other  as  to  seem  to 
coalesce.  We  cannot  substitute  for  this  illusory  appeal  the 
valid  method  of  an  analysis  of  knowledge,  without  finding 
that  substantiation  in  matter  is  just  as  necessary  to  know- 
ledge as  substantiation  in  mind.  If  this  method  had  been 
Berkeley's  he  would  have  found  a  better  plan  for  dealing  with 
the  '  materialism  '  in  vogue.  Instead  of  trying  to  show  that 
material  substance  was  a  fiction,  he  would  have  shown  that 
it  was  really  a  basis  of  intelligible  relations,  and  that  thus 
all  that  was  fictitious  about  it  was  its  supposed  sensibility 
and  consequent  opposition  to  the  work  of  thought.  Then 
his  doctrine  of  matter  would  itself  have  established  the 
necessity  of  spirit,  not  indeed  as  substance  but  as  the 
source  of  all  substantiation.     As  it  was,  misunderstanding 

"  Above,  paragraph  126.  *  Above,  paragraph  127. 


IM  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

the  true  nature  of  the  antithesis  between  matter  and  mind, 
in  his  zeal  against  matter  he  took  away  the  ground  from 
under  the  spiritualism  which  he  sought  to  maintain.  He 
simply  invited  a  successor  in  speculation,  of  colder  blood 
than  himself,  to  try  the  solution  of  spirit  in  the  same  crucible 
with  matter, 
as  well  AS  193.  His  doctrine  of  God  is  not  only  open  to  the  same  ob- 
to  a  true  jection  as  his  doctrine  of  spiritual  substance,  but  to  others 
which  arise  from  the  illogical  restrictions  that  have  to  be  put 
upon  his  notion  of  such  substance,  if  it  is  to  represent  at  once 
the  Grod  of  received  theology  and  the  God  whose  agency  the 
Berkeleian  system  requires  as  the  basis  of  distinction  be- 
tween the  real  and  unreal.  Admitting  the  supposition 
involved  in  his  certainty  of  the  *  natural  immortality'  of  the 
soul — ^the  supposition  that  the  succession  of  feelings  which 
constitutes  the  world,  and  which  at  no  time  was  not,  implies 
one  feeling  substance — ^that  substance  we  should  naturaUy 
conclude  was  God.  Such  a  God,  it  is  true  (as  has  been  already 
pointed  out),*  would  merely  be  the  fiiya  ^&ov  of  the  crudest 
Pantheism,  but  it  is  the  only  God  logically  admissible — if 
any  be  admissible — in  an  *  ideal '  system  of  which  the  text  is 
not  *  the  world  really  exists  only  as  thought  of,'  but  *the  world 
only  exists  as  a  succession  of  feelings.'  It  was  other  than  a 
feeling  substance,  however,  that  Berkeley  required  not  merely 
to  satisfy  his  religious  instincts,  but  to  take  the  place  held  by 
^  outward  body'  with  Locke  as  the  efficient  of  real  ideas.  The 
reference  to  this  feeling  substance,  if  necessary  for  any  idea, 
is  necessary  for  all — for  the  '  fantastic '  as  well  as  for  those 
of  sense — and  can  therefore  afford  no  ground  for  distinction 
between  the  real  and  unreal.  Instead,  however,  of  being  thus 
led  to  a  truer  view  of  this  distinction,  as  in  truth  a  distinc- 
tion between  the  complete  and  incomplete  conception  of  an 
intelligible  world,  he  simply  puts  the  feeling  substance,  when 
he  regards  it  as  God,  under  an  arbitrary  limitation,  making 
it  relative  only  to  those  ideas  of  which  with  Locke  '  matter ' 
was  the  substance,  as  opposed  to  those  which  Locke  had 
referred  to  the  thinking  thing.  The  direct  consequence  of 
this  limitation,  indeed,  might  seem  to  be  merely  to  make  God 
an  animal  of  partial,  instead  of  universal,  susceptibility ;  but 
this  consequence  Berkeley  avoids  by  dropping  the  ordinary 
notion  of  substance  altogether,  so  as  to  represent  the  ideas  of 

See  paragraph  180. 


HUME  IS  BERKELETS  LOGICAL  RESULT.  169 

sense  not  as  subsisting  in  God  bat  as  effects  of  His  power —  His  infer- 
as  related  to  Him,  in  short,  just  as  with  Locke  ideas  of  sense  ^^  ^9 
are  related  to  the  primary  qualities  of  matter.     ^  There  must  neeeasity 
be  an  active  power  to  produce  our  ideas,  which  is  not  to  be  of  a  power 
found  in  ideas  themselves,  for  we  are  conscious  that  they  are  idJ^^^ 
inert,  nor  in  matter,  since  that  is  but  a  name  for  a  bundle  of 
ideas ;  which  must  therefore  be  in  spirit,  since  of  that  we  are 
conscious  as  active ;   yet  not  in  the  spirit  of  which  we  are 
conscious,  since  then  there  would  be  no  difference  between 
real  and  imaginary  ideas ;   therefore  in  a  Divine  Spirit,  to 
whom,  however,  may  forthwith  be  ascribed  the  attributes  of 
the  spirit  of  which  we  are  conscious.'     Such  is  the  sum 
of  Berkeley's  natural  theology. 

194.  From  a  follower  of  Hume  it  of  course  invites  the  reply  a  naceesHy 
that  he  does  not  see  the  necessity  of  an  active  power  at  all,  ^^^ 
to  which,  since,  according  to  Berkeley's  own  showing,  it  is  no  not  see. 
possible  ^  idea'  or  object  of  an  idea,  all  his  own  polemic  against 
the  ^  absolute  idea '  of  matter  is  equally  applicable ;  that  the 
efficient  power,  of  which  we  profess  to  be  conscious  in  ourselves, 
is  itself  only  a  name  for  a  particular  feeling  or  impression 
which  precedes  certain  other  of  our  impressions ;  that,  even 
if  it  were  more  than  this,  the  transition  from  the  spiritual 
efficiency  of  which  we  are  conscious  to  another,  of  which  it  is 
the  special  differentia  that  we  are  not  conscious  of  it,  would 
be  quite  illegitimate,  and  that  thus  in  saying  that  certain 
feelbigs  are  real  because,  being  lively  and  involuntary,  they 
must  be  the  work  of  this  unknown  spirit,  we  in  effect  say 
nothing  more  than  that  they  are  real  because  lively  and 
involuntary.  Against  a  retort  of  this  kind  Berkeley's  theistic 
armour  is  even  less  proof  than  Locke's.  His  '  proof  of  the 
being  of  God '  is  in  fact  Locke's  with  the  sole  nerws  probandi 
left  out.  The  value  of  Locke's  proof,  as  an  argument  from 
their  being  something  now  to  their  having  been  something 
fix)m  eternity,  lay,  we  saw,  in  its  convertibility  into  an  argu- 
ment from  tiie  world  as  a  system  of  relations  to  a  present 
and  eternal  subject  of  those  relations.  For  its  being  so  con- 
vertible there  was  this  to  be  said,  that  Locke,  with  whatever 
inconsistency,  at  least  recognised  the  constitution  of  reality 
by  permanent  relations,  though  he  treated  the  mere  relation 
of  external  efficiency — that  in  virtue  of  which  we  say  of 
nature  that  it  consists  of  bodies  outward  to  and  acting  on 
each  other — as  if  it  alone  constituted  the  reality  of  the  world. 


IfiO  GENERAL  INTRODUOTION. 

A  different  Berkeley's  reduction  of  the  'primary  qualities  of  matter'  to 
0^il  ^  succession  of  feelings  logically  eflhces  this  relation,  and 
faATe  been  puts  nothing  intelligible,  nothing  but  a  name,  in  its  place. 
SeaHsm^if  '^^  effacement  of  the  distinction  between  the  real  and  unreal, 
it  was  to  which  would  properly  ensue,  is  only  prevented  by  bringing 
■arve  his  j^g^j^  relation  to  something  under  the  name  of  Gtod,  eitlier 
wholly  unknown  and  indeterminate,  or  else,  under  a  thin 
disguise,  determined  by  that  very  relation  of  external  efficiency 
which,  when  ascribed  to  sometiiing  only  nominally  different, 
had  been  pronounced  a  gratuitous  fiction.  If  Berkeley  had 
dealt  with  the  opposition  of  reality  to  thought  by  showing 
the  primary  qualities  to  be  conceived  relations,  and  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  real  and  unreal  to  be  one  between  the 
fully  and  the  defectively  conceived,  the  case  would  have  been 
different.  The  real  and  God  would  alike  have  been  logically 
saved.  The  peculiar  embarrassment  of  Locke's  doctrine  we 
have  found  to  be  that  it  involves  the  unreality  of  every  object, 
into  the  constitution  of  which  there  enters  any  idea  of  reflec- 
tion, or  any  idea  retained  in  the  mind,  as  distinct  from  the 
present  effect  of  a  body  acting  upon  us — ue,  of  every  object 
of  which  anything  can  be  said.  With  the  definite  substitu- 
tion of  full  intelligibility  of  relations  for  present  sensibility, 
as  the  true  account  of  the  real,  this  embarrassment  would 
have  been  got  rid  of.  At  the  same  time  there  would  have 
been  implied  an  intelligent  subject  of  these  relations ;  the 
ascription  to  whom,  indeed,  of  moral  attributes  would  have 
remained  a  further  problem,  but  who,  far  from  being  a 
*  Great  Unknown,'  would  be  at  least  determined  by  relation 
to  that  order  of  nature  which  is  as  necessary  to  Him  as  He 
to  it.  But  in  fact,  as  we  have  seen,  the  notion  of  the 
reality  of  relations,  not  felt  but  understood,  only  appears  in. 
Berkeley's  developed  philosophy  as  an  after-tiiought,  and 
the  notion  of  an  order  of  nature,  other  than  our  feelings, 
which  enables  us  to  infer  what  feelings  that  have  never  been 
felt  would  be,  is  an  unexplained  intrusion  in  it.  The  same 
is  true  of  the  doctrine,  which  struggles  to  the  surface  in  the 
Third  Dialogue,  that  the  *  sensible  world '  is  to  God  not  felt 
at  all,  but  known ;  that  to  Him  it  is  precisely  not  that  which 
according  to  Berkeley's  refutation  of  materialism  it  really  is — • 
a  series  or  collection  of  sensations.  These  ^  after- thoughts,' 
when  thoroughly  thought  out,  imply  a  complete  departure 
from  Berkeley's  original  interpretation  of  '  phenomena '  as 


IMPRESSIONS  AND  IDEAS.  161 

simple  feelings ;  bat  with  him,  so  far  from  being  ihonglit 
out,  they  merely  suggested  themselves  incidentally  as  the 
conceptions  of  Qod  and  reality  were  found  to  require  them. 
In  other  words,  that  interpretotion  of  phenomena,  which  is 
necessary  to  any  valid  '  collection '  fix>m  them  of  the  existence 
of  Grod,  only  appears  in  him  as  a  consequence  of  that '  collec-  Han^p's 
tion '  having  been  made.  To  pursue  the  original  interpreta-  ■^■*^'^ 
tion,  so  that  all  might  know  what  it  left  of  reality,  was  the 
best  x^y  of  deciding  the  question  of  its  compatibility  with  a 
rational  belief  in  God — a  question  of  too  momentous  an 
interest  to  be  fairly  considered  in  itself.  Thus  to  pursue  it 
was  the  mission  of  Hume.  *- 

195.  Hume  begins  with  an  account  of  the  '  perceptions  of  His  ac- 
khe  human  mind/  which  corresponds  to  Locke's  account  of  !^^^  ^^ 
ideas  with  two  main  qualifications,  both  tending  to  complete  riouTnd 
that  dependence  of  liiought  on  something  other  than  itself  '^^^^ 
which  Locke  had  asserted,  but  not  consistently  maintained. 
He  distinguishes  ^  perceptions '  (equivalent  to  Locke's  ideas) 
into  ^  impressions '  and  *  ideas '  accordingly  as  they  are  origi- 
nally produced  in  feeling  or  reproduced  by  memory  and 
imagination,  and  he  does  not  al.ow  *  ideas  of  reflection '  any 
place  in  the  original '  furniture  of  the  mind.'  ^  An  impression 
first  strikes  upon  the  senses,  and  makes  us  perceive  heat  or 
cold,  thirst  or  hunger,  pleasure  or  pain,  of  some  kind  or  other. 
Of  this  impression  there  is  a  copy  taken  by  the  mind,  which 
remains  after  the  impression  ceases;  and  this  we  call  an 
idea.  This  idea  of  pleasure  or  pain,  when  it  returns  upon  the 
soul,  produces  the  new  impressions  of  desire  and  aversion, 
hope  anl  fear,  which  may  properly  be  called  impressions  of 
reflection,  because  derived  from  it.  These,  again,  are  copied 
by  the  memory  and  imaginfition,  and  become  ideas ;  which, 
perhaps,  in  their  turn  give  rise  to  other  impressions  and 
ideas ;  so  that  the  impressions  are  only  antecedent  to  their 
correspondent  ideas,  but  posterior  to  those  of  sensation  and 
derived  from  them '  (Part  I.  §  2) .  He  is  at  the  same  time  careful 
to  explain  that  the  causes  from  which  the  impressions  of 
sensation  arise  are  unknown  (ibid.),  and  that  by  the  term 
'  impression '  he  is  not  to  be  ^  understood  to  express  the 
manner  in  which  our  lively  perceptions  are  produced  in  the 
soul,  but  merely  the  perceptions  themselves'  (p.  812,  note). 
The  distinction  between  impression  and  idea  he  treats  as 
equivalent  to  that  between  feeling  and  thinking,  which,  again, 

VOL.   L  M 


182  GENERAL  INTRODUOTION. 

lies  merely  in  the  dijBFerent  degrees  of  ^  force  and  liveliness ' 
with  which  the  perceptions,  thus  designated,  severally  '  strike 
upon  the  mind.'  *  Thus  the  rule  which  he  emphasises  (p.  310) 
IdoM  are  <  that  all  our  simple  ideas  in  their  first  appearance  are  de- 
prawioDB.  nved  from  simple  impressions  which  are  correspondent  to 
them  and  which  they  exactly  represent,'  strictly  taken,  means 
no  more  than  that  a  feeling  must  be  more  lively  before  it 
becomes  less  so.  As  the  reproduced  perception,  or  ^  idea,' 
diifers  in  this  respect  from  the  original  one,  so,  according  to 
the  greater  or  less  degree  of  secondary  liveliness  which  it 
possesses,  is  it  called  ^  idea  of  memory,'  or  '  idea  of  imagina- 
tion.' The  only  other  distmction  noticed  is  that,  as  might 
be  expected,  the  comparative  feiintness  of  the  ideas  of  unagi- 
nation  is  accompanied  by  a  possibility  of  their  being  repro- 
duced in  a  different  order  from  that  in  which  the  correspond- 
ing ideas  were  originally  presented.  Memory,  on  the  contrary, 
<  is  in  a  manner  tied  down  in  this  respect,  without  any  power 
of  variation'  (p.  318) ;  which  must  be  understood  to  mean 
that,  when  the  ideas  are  faint  enough  to  allow  of  variation 
in  the  order  of  reproduction,  they  are  not  called  'ideas 
of  memory.' 
*  Ideas'  196.  All,  then,  that  Hume  could  find  in  his  mind,  when 

i^  w*^!*^^  after  Locke's  example  he  'looked  into  it,'  were,  according  to 
presented  his  owu  statement,  feelings  with  their  copies,  dividing  them- 
S^ned  m"  ^^^®®  ^^  ^^^  main  orders — ^those  of  sensation  and  those  of 
mero  reflection,  of  which  the  latter,  though  results  of  the  former, 

words.  ^^  j^Q^  their  copies.  The  question,  then,  that  he  had  to  deal 
with  was,  to  what  impressions  he  could  reduce  those  concep- 
tions of  relation^-of  cause  and  effect,  substance  and  attribute, 
and  identity — which  all  knowledge  involves.  Failing  the 
impressions  of  sensation  he  must  try  those  of  reflection,  and 
failing  both  he  must  pronounce  such  conceptions  to  be  no 
'  ideas '  at  all,  but  words  misunderstood,  and  leave  knowledge 
to  take  its  chance.  The  vital  nerve  of  his  philosophy  lies  in 
%  his  treatment  of  the  '  association  of  ideas '  as  a  sort  of  process 

of  spontaneous  generation,  by  which  impressions  of  sensation 
issue  in  such  impressions  of  reflection,  in  the  shape  of  habitual 
propensities,*  as  will  account,  not  indeed  for  there  being — 
since  there  really  are  not— but  for  there  seeming  to  be,  those 
formal  conceptions  which  Locke,  to  the  embarrassment  of 

>  8ee  pp.  827  and  375.  *  Pp.  460  and  496. 


BOTY  MEANS  CERTAIN  IMPRESSIONS.  168 

nifl  philosophy,  had  treated  as  at  once  real  and  creations  of 
the  mind. 

197-  Such  a  method  meets  at  the  outset  with  the  difficulty  Hum* 
that  the  impressions  of  sensation  and  those  of  reflection,  if  gtri^j, 
Locke's  determination  of  the  former  by  reference  to  an  im-  i»Te8  no 
pressive  matter  is  excluded,  are  each  determined  only  by  ij^^een^" 
reference  to  the  other.     What  is  an  impression  of  reflection?  impree- 
It  is  one  that  can  only  come  after  an  impression  of  sensation.  ^£^oq 
What  is  an  impression  of  sensation?    It  is  one  that  comes  and  of  sen- 
before  any  impression  of  reflection.     An  apparent  determina-  "^^^^ 
tion,  indeed,  is  gained  by  speaking  of  the  original  impressions 
as  *  conveyed  to  us  by  our  senses;'  but  this  really  means  de- 
termination by  reference  to  the  organs  of  our  body  as  affected 
by  outward  bodies — in  short,  by  a  physical  theory.     But  of 
the  two  essential  terms  of  this  theory,  *  our  own  body,'  and 
*  outward  body,'  neither,  according  to  Hume,  expresses  any- 
thing present  to  the  original  ccmsciousness.   '  Properly  speak- 
ing, it  is  not  our  body  we  perceive  when  we  regard  our 
limbs  and  members,  but  certain  impressions  which  enter  by 
the  senses.'    Nor  do  any  of  our  impressions  *  inform  us  of 
distance  and  outness  (so  to  speak)  immediately,  and  without 
a  certain  reasoning  and  experience '  (p.  481).     In  such  ad- 
missions Hume  is  as  much  a  Berkeleian  as  Berkeley  himself, 
and  they  effectually  exclude  any  reference  to  body  from  those 
original  impressions,  by  reference  to  which  all  other  modes 
of  consciousness  are  to  be  explained.  /~ 

198.  He  thus  logically  cuts  off  his  psychology  from  the  Locke'f 
support  which,  according  to  popular  conceptions,  its  primary  *^^J^^ 
truths  derive  from  physiology.    We  have  already  noticed  diBappean. 
bow  with  Locke  metaphysic  begs  defence  of  physic ;  ^  how, 
having  undertaken  to  answer  by  the  impossible  method  of 
self-observation  the  question  as  to  what  consciousness  is  to 
itself  at  its  beginning,  he  in  fact  tells  us  what  it  is  to  the 
natural  philosopher,  who  accounts  for  the  production  of  sen- 
sation by  the  impact  of  matter  *  on  the  outward  parts,  con- 
tinued to  the  brain.'    To  those,  of  course,  who  hold  that  the 
only  possible  theory  of  knowledge  and  of  the  human  spirit  is 
physical,  it  must  seem  that  this  was  his  greatest  merit ; 
that,  an  unmeaning  question  having  been  asked,  it  was  the 
best  thing  to  give  an  answer  which  indeed  is  no  answer  to 

'  See  above,  pamgraph  17. 
M  2 


164  GENEBAL  INTRODUCTION. 

the  question^  but  has  some  elementary  truth  of  its  own. 
According  to  them,  though  he  may  have  been  wrong  in  sup- 
posing consciousness  to  be  to  itself  what  the  physiologist 
Phywoiogy  explains  it  to  be — since  any  supposition  at  all  about  it  except 
■wer^the"     ^  *  phenomenon,  to  which  certain  other  phenomena  are  in- 
^nestaon      variably  antecedent,  is  at  best  superfluous— he  was  not  wrong 
^^^l"®**®  in  taking  the  physiological  explanation  to  be  the  true  and 
sufficient  one.  To  such  persons  we  can  but  respectfully  point 
out  that  they  have  not  come  in  sight  of  the  problem  which 
Locke  and  his  followers,  on  however  false  a  method,  sought 
to  solve ;  that,  however  certain  may  be  the  correlation  between 
the  brain  and  thought,  in  the  sense  that  the  individual  would 
be  incapable  of  the  processes  of  thought  unless  he  had  brain 
and  nerves  of  a  particular  sort,  yet  it  is  equally  certain  that 
every  theory  of  the  correlation  must  presuppose  a  knowledge 
of  the  processes,  and  leave  that  knowledge  exactly  where  it 
was  before;  that  thus  their  science,  valuable  like  every  other 
science  within  its  own  department,  takes  for  granted  just 
what  metaphysic,  as  a  theory  of  knowledge,  seeks  to  explain* 
When  the  origin,  for  instance,  of  the  conception  of  body  or 
of  that  of  an  organic  structure  is  in  question,  it  is  in  the 
strictest  sense  preposterous  to  be  told  that  body  makes  the 
conception  of  body,  and  that  unless  the  brain  were  organic 
to  thought  I  should  not  now  be  thinking.    '  The  brain  is 
organic  to  thought ;  *  here  is  a  proposition  involving  concep- 
tions within  conceptions — a  whole  hierarchy  of  ideas.    How 
am  I  enabled  to  re-think  these  in  order,  to  make  my  way 
from  the  simpler  to  the  more  complex,  by  any  iteration  or 
demonstration  of  the  proposition,  which  no  one  disputes,  or 
by  the  most  precise  examination  of  the  details  of  the  organic 
structure  itself? 
Thonewho       199.  The  quarrel  of  the  physiologist  with  the  metaphy- 
'^iid^^^^t    si^^^  ^8>  ^  ^^^^9  ^^®  ^  ^^  ignorantia  elenchi  on  the  part 
understand  of  the  former,  for  which  the  behaviour  of  English  *  metaphy- 
the  quos.     sicians,'  in  attempting  to  assimilate  their  own  procedure  to 
that  of  the  natural  philosophers,  and  thus  to  win  the  popular 
acceptance  which  these  alone  can  £Edrly  look  for,  has  afiForded 
too  much  excuse.    The  question  really  at  issue  is  not  between 
two  co-ordinate  sciences,  as  if  a  theory  of  the  human  body 
were  claiming  also  to  be  a  theory  of  the  human  soul,  and  the 
theory  of  the  soul  were  resisting  the  aggression.    The  ques^ 
tion  is,  whether  the  conceptions  which  all  the  departmental 


PHYSIOLOGY,  METAPHYSICS,  PSYCHOLOGY.         166 

sciences  alike  presuppose  shall  have  an  account  given  of  them 
or  no.  For  dispensing  with  such  an  account  altogether  (life 
being  short)  there  is  much  to  be  said,  if  only  men  would  or 
sould  dispense  with  it;,  but  the  physiologist,  when  he  claim& 
that  his  science  shoxdd  supersede  metaphysic,  is  not  dispen* 
sing  with  it,  but  rendering  it  in  a  preposterous  way.  He 
accounts  for  the  formal  conceptions  in  question,  in  other 
words  for  thought  as  it  is  common  to  all  the  sciences,  as 
sequent  upon  the  antecedent  facts  which  his  science  ascer- 
tains— the  facts  of  the  animal  organisation.  But  these  con- 
ceptions— ^the  relations  of  cause  and  effect,  &c. — are  necessary 
to  constitute  the  facts.  They  are  not  an  ex  post  fdcto  in- 
terpretation of  them,  but  an  interpretation  without  which 
there  would  be  no  ascertainable  fiicts  at  all.  To  account 
for  them,  therefore,  as  the  result  of  the  facts  is  to  pro- 
ceed as  a  geologist  would  do,  who  should  treat  the  present 
conformation  of  the  earth  as  the  result  of  a  certain 
series  of  past  events,  and  yet,  in  describing  these,  should 
assume  the  present  conformation  as  a  determining  element 
in  each« 

200.  *  Empirical  psychology,'  however,  claims  to  have  a  Hume's 
way  of  its  own  for  explaining  thought,  distinct  from  that  of  ^{|[^®^^***^ 
the  physiologist,  but  yet  founded  on  observation,  though  it  is  answer  it 
admitted  that  the  observation  takes  place  under  difficulties.  ®^*^®'- 
Its  method  consists  in  a  history  of  consciousness,  as  a  series 
of  events  or  successive  states  observed  in  the  individual  by 
Iiimself.  By  tracing  such  a  chain  of  de  facto  sequence  it  un- 
dertakes to  account  for  the  elements  common  to  all  know- 
ledge. Its  first  concern,  then,  must  be,  as  we  have  previously 
put  it,  to  ascertain  what  consciousness  is  to  itself  at  its 
beginning.  No  one  with  Berkeley  before  him,  and  accepting 
Berkeley's  negative  results,  could  answer  this  question  in 
liOcke's  simple  way  by  making  the  primitive  consciousness 
report  itself  as  ah  effect  of  the  operation  of  body.  To  do 
BO  is  to  transfer  a  later  and  highly  complex  form  of  con- 
sciousness, whose  growth  has  to  be  traced,  into  the  earlier 
and  simple  form  from  which  the  growth  is  supposed  to 
begin.  This,  upon  the  supposition  that  the  process  of  con- 
Bciousness  by  which  conceptions  are  formed  is  a  series  of 
psychical  events — sl  supposition  on  which  the  whole  method 
of  empirical  psychology  rests — is  in  principle  the  same  false 
procedure  as  that  which  we  have  imagined  in  tho  case  of  a 


IW  GENERAL  INTRODUOTION. 

geologist  above.  Bat  the  question  is  whether,  by  any  pio-  ^ 
cedore  not  open  to  this  condemnation,  the  theory  coxdd  seem 
to  do  what  it  professes  to  do— explain  thought  or  '  cognition 
by  means  of  conceptions '  as  something  which  happens  in 
sequence  upon  previous  psychical  events.  Does  it  not,  how- ' 
ever  stated,  carry  with  it  an  implication  of  the  supposed 
later  state  in  the  earlier,  and  is  it  not  solely  in  virtue  of  this 
implication  that  it  seems  to  be  able  to  trace  the  genesis  of 
the  later?  No  one  has  pursued  it  with  stricter  promises,  or 
made  a  fairer  show  of  being  faithful  to  them,  than  Hume. 
He  will  begin  with  simple  feeling,  as  first  experienced  by  the 
individual — unqualified  by  complex  conceptions,  physical  or 
metaphysical,  of  matter  or  of  mind — ^and  trace  the  process 
by  which  it  generates  the  '  ideas  of  philosophical  relation.' 
If  it  can  be  shown,  as  we  believe  it  can  be,  that,  even  when 
thus  pursued,  its  semblance  of  success  is  due  to  the  fact  that, 
by  interpreting  the  earliest  consciousness  in  terms  of  the 
latest,  it  puts  the  latter  in  place  of  the  former,  some  suspicion 
may  perhaps  be  created  that  a  natural  hibtory  of  self-con- 
sciousness, and  of  the  conceptions  by  which  it  makes  the 
world  its  own,  is  impossible,  since  such  a  history  must  be  of 
events,  and  self-consciousness  is  not  reducible  to  a  series  of 
events ;  being  already  at  its  beginning  formally,  or  poten- 
tially, or  implicitly  all  that  it  becomes  actually  or  explicitly 
in  developed  knowledge. 
It  only  201.  If  Hume  were  consistent  in  allowing  no  other  deter- 

do^rob^^aa-  Vi^^^^^^^^  ^  *^®  impression  than  that  of  its  having  the 
Burning  the  maximum  of  vivacity,  or  to  other  modes  of  consciousness 
jfictwn'  it  y^a^jj  f^Q  several  degrees  of  their  removal  from  this  maximum, 
eount  for;  he  would  certainly  have  avoided  the  difficulties  which  attend 
Locke's  use  of  the  metaphor  of  impression,  while  at  the  same 
time  he  would  have  missed  the  convenience,  involved  in  this 
use,  of  being  able  to  represent  the  primitive  consciousness  as 
already  a  recognition  of  a  thing  impressing  it,  and  thus  an 
'  idea  of  a  quality  of  body.'  But  at  the  outset  he  remarks 
that '  the  examination  of  our  sensations '  {i.e.  our  impressions 
of  sensation)  '  belongs  more  to  anatomists  and  natural  phi- 
losophers than  to  moral,'  and  that  for  that  reason  he  shall 
begin  not  with  them  but  with  ideas  (p.  317).  Now  this  vir- 
tually means  that  he  will  begin,  indeed,  with  the  feelings  he 
finds  in  himself,  but  with  these  as  determined  by  the  notion 
that  they  are  results  of  something  else,  of  which  the  nature 


BQUIVOOAL  USE  OF  'IMPRESSION;  167 

is  not  tor  the  present  explained.  Thus,  while  he  does  not, 
like  Locke,  identify  onr  eadiest  consciousness,  with  a  roagh 
and  ready  physical  theory  of  its  cause,  he  gains  the  advan* 
tage  of  this  identification  in  the  mind  of  his  reader,  who  from 
sensation,  thus  apparently  defined,  transfers  a  definiteness  to  hj 
the  ideas  and  secondary  impressions  as  derived  from  it,  |^^^ 
though  in  the  sequel  the  theory  tarns  out,  if  possible  at  all,  non  re- 
to  be  at  best  a  remote  result  of  cnstom  and  association.  We  5^|J^i5 
shall  see  this  more  clearly  if  we  look  back  to  the  general 
account  of  impressions  and  ideas  quoted  above.  *  An  im- 
pression first  strikes  upon  the  senses  and  makes  us  perceive 
pleasure  or  pain,  of  which  a  copy  is  taken  by  the  mind,'  called 
an  idea.  Now  if  we  set  aside  the  notion  of  a  body  making 
impact  upon  a  sensuous,  and  through  it  upon  a  mental, 
tablet,  pleasure  or  pain  is  the  impression,  which,  again,  is  as 
much  or  as  little  in  the  mind  as  the  idea.  Thus  the  state- 
ment might  be  re-written  as  follows : — ^  Pleasure  or  pain 
makes  the  mind  parceive  pleasure  or  pain,  of  which  a  copy 
is  taken  by  the  mind.'  This,  of  course,  is  nonsense ;  but 
between  this  nonsense  and  the  plausibility  of  the  state- 
ment as  it  stands,  the  difference  depends  on  the  double 
distinction  understood  in  the  latter — the  distinction  (a)  be- 
tween the  producing  cause  of  the  impression  and  the  im- 
pression produced ;  and  (&)  between  the  impression  as 
produced  on  the  senses,  and  the  idea  as  preserved  by  the 
mind.  This  passage,  as  we  shall  see,  is  only  a  sample  of 
many  of  the  same  sort.  Throughout,  however  explicitly 
Hume  may  give  warning  that  the  difference  between  im- 
pression and  idea  is  only  one  of  liveliness,  however  little 
he  may  scruple  in  the  sequel  to  reduce  body  and  mind 
alike  to  Ihe  succession  of  feelings,  his  system  gains  the 
benefit  of  the  contrary  assumption  which  the  uncritical  reader 
is  ready  to  make  for  him.  As  often  as  the  question  returns 
whether  a  phrase,  purporting  to  express  an  '  abstract  concep- 
tion,' expresses  any  actual  idea  or  no,  his  test  is,  ^  Point  out 
the  impression  from  which  the  idea,  if  there  be  any,  is  de- 
rived ' — a  test  which  has  clearly  no  significance  if  the  im- 
pression is  merely  the  idea  itself  at  a  livelier  stage  (for  a 
person,  claiming  to  have  the  idea,  would  merely  have  to  say 
that  he  had  never  known  it  more  lively,  and  that,  therefore, 
it  was  itself  an  impression,  and  the  force  of  the  test  would 
be  gone),  but  which  seems  so  satisfactory  because  the  imprep- 


168  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

sion  is  regarded  as  the  direct  effect  of  outward  things,  and 
thns  as  having  a  prerogative  of  reality  over  any  perception 
to  which  the  mind  contributes  anything  of  its  own.    By 
availing  himself  alternately  of  this  popular  conception  of  the 
impression  of  sensation  and  of  his  own  account  of  it,  he  gains 
a  double  means  of  suppressing  any  claim  of  thought  to  ori- 
ginate.  Every  idea,  by  being  supposed  in  a  more  lively  state, 
can  be  represented  as  derived  fix)m  an  impression,  and  thus 
(according  to  the  popular  notion)  as  an  effect  of  something 
which,  whatever  it  is,  is  not  thought.     If  thereupon  it  is 
pointed  out   that  this  outward   something   is   a    form  of 
substance  which,  according  to  Hume's  own  showing,  is  a 
fiction  of  thought,  there  is  an  easy  refdge  open  in  the  reply 
that  'impression'  is  only  meant  to  express  a  lively  feel- 
ing, not  any  dependence  upon  matter  of  which  we  know 
noUiing. 
Sotiie'Po-       202.  Thus  the  way  is  prepared  for  the  jnggle  which  the 
■itivist'      modem  popular  logic  performs  with  the  word  *  phenomenon' 
w^  *phe-  — 3'  term  which  gains  acceptance  for  the  theory  that  turns 
nomena.*     upon  it  because  it  conveys  the  notion  of  a  relation  between 
a  real  order  and  a  perceiving  mind,  and  thus  gives  to  those 
who  avail  themselves  of  it  the  benefit  of  an  implication  of  the 
*  noumena '  which  they  affect  to  ignore.     Hume's  inconsis- 
tency, however,  stops  &r  short  of  that  of  his  later  disciples. 
9  JFor  tiie  purpose  of  detraction  from  the  work  of  thought  he 
-    availed  himself,  indeed,  of  that  work  as  embodied  in  lan- 
guage, but  only  so  far  as  was  necessary  to  his  destructive 
purpose.     He  did  not  seriously  affect  to  be  reconstructing 
the  fabric  of  knowledge  on  a  basis  of  fact.      There  occa- 
sionally appears  in  him,  indeed,  something  of  the  charla- 
tanry of  common  sense  in  passages,  more  worthy  of  Boling- 
broke  than  himself,  where  he  writes  as  a  champion  of  facts 
against  metaphysical  jargon.     But  when  we  get  behind  the 
mask  of  concession  to  popular  prejudice,  partly  ironical, 
partly  due  to  his  imdoubted  vanity,  we  find  much  more  of 
the  ancient  sceptic  than  of  the  '  positive  philosopher.' 
Enential         ^^3.  The  ancient  sceptic  (at  least  as  represented  by  the 
diflFerence,    ancient  philosophers),  finding  knowledge  on  the  basis  of  dis- 
betlroon^*     tinction  between  the  real  and  apparent  to  be  impossible, 
Hume  and   discarded  the  enterprise  of  arriving  at  general  truth  in  oppo- 
tfvisL'**"     sition  to  what  appears  to  the  individual  at  any  particular 
instant,  and  satisfied  himself  with  noting  such  general  ten- 
dencies of  expectation  and  desire  as  would  guide  men  in  the 


HUME  AND  THE  POSITIVISTS.  1(J9 

conduct  of  life  and  enable  them  to  get  what  they  wanted  by 
contriyance  and  persuasion.^  Such  a  state  of  mind  excludes 
all  motive  to  the  *  interrogation  of  nature/  for  it  recognises 
no  ^  nature '  but  the  present  appearance  to  the  individual ; 
and  this  does  not  admit  of  being  interrogated.  The  *  posi- 
tive philosopher '  has  nothing  in  common  with  it  but  the  use, 
in  a  different  sense,  of  ihe  word  'apparent.'  He  plumes 
himself,  indeed,  on  not  going  in  quest  of  any  '  thing-in-itself ' 
other  than  what  appears  to  the  senses ;  but  he  distinguishes 
between  a  real  and  apparent  in  the  order  of  appearance,  and 
considers  the  real  order  of  appearance,  having  a  permanence 
and  uniformity  which  belong  to  no  feeling  as  the  individual 
feels  it,  to  be  the  true  object  of  knowledge.  No  one  is  more 
severe  upon  *  propensities  to  believe,*  however  spontaneously 
suggested  by  the  ordinary  sequence  of  appearances,  if  they 
are  found  to  conflict  with  tiiQ  order  of  nature  as  ascer- 
tained by  experimental  interrogation ;  {.e.  with  a  sequence 
observed  (it  may  be)  in  but  a  single  instance.  Which  of  the 
two  attitudes  of  thought  is  the  more  nearly  Hume's,  will-, 
come  out  as  we  proceed.  It  was  just  with  the  distinction 
between  the  '  real  and  fantastic,'  as  Locke  had  left  it,  that 
he  had  to  deal ;  and,  as  will  appear,  it  is  finally  by  a '  propensity 
to  feign,'  not  by  a  imiform  order  of  natural  phenomena, 
that  he  replaces  the  real  which  Locke,  according  to  his  first 
mind,  had  found  in  archetypal  things  and  their  operations 
on  us. 

204.  We  have  seen  that  Berkeley,  having  reduced  *  simple  He  adopt* 
ideas '  to  their  simplicity  by  showing  the  illegitimacy  of  the  doctrine^ 
assumption  that  they  report  qualities  of  a  matter  which  is  itself  ideas,  but 
a  complex  idea,  is  only  able  to  make  his  constructive  theory  bJJJ^w, 
inarch  by  the  supposition  of  the  reality  and  knowability  of  saTing 
*  spirit'   and   relations.      *  Ideas'   are  *  fleeting,  perishable  J^^m 
passions ;'  but  the  relations  between  them  are  uniform,  and 
in  virtue  of  this  uniformity  the  fleeting  idea  may  be  inter- 
preted as  a  symbol  of  a  real  order.     But  such  relations,  as 
real,  imply  the  presence  of  the  ideas  to  the  constant  mind  of 
God,  and,  as  knowable,  their  presence  to  a  like  mind  in  us. 
We  have  farther  seen  how  little  Berkeley,  according  to  the 
method  by  which  he  disposed  of  ^  abstract  general  ideas,'  was 
entitled  to  such  a  supposition.    Hume  sets  it  aside ;  but  the 

>  Of.  Flato's  'Protagoras/  323,  and      book  of  Hume's  *Treatue  on  Humui 
•Theetetoa,'  167,  with  the  condnding      Vatuie.' 
paragraphs  of  the  last  part  of  the  first 


170  GENERAL  INTRODUCfnON. 

question  is,  whether  without  a  supposition  yirtually  the  same 
he  can  represent  the  association  of  ideas  as  doing  the  work 
that  he  assigned  to  it. 
vn  wgard  ^  205.  His  exclusion  of  Berkeley's  supposition  with  regard 
"^"^  to  *  spirit  *  is  stated  witiiout  disguise,  though  unfortunately 
not  till  towards  the  end  of  the  first  book  of  the  ^  Treatise  on 
Human  Nature/  which  could  not  have  run  so  smoothly  if 
the  statement  had  been  made  at  the  beginning.  It  follows 
legitimately  from  the  method,  which  he  inherited,  of '  look- 
ing into  his  mind  to  see  how  it  wrought.'  *  From  what  im- 
pression,' he  asks,  ^  could  the  idea  of  self  be  derived?  It 
must  be  some  one  impression  that  gives  rise  to  every  real 
idea.  But  self  or  person  is  not  any  impression,  but  that  to 
which  our  several  impressions  and  idesis  are  supposed  to  have 
a  reference.  If  any  impression  gives  rise  to  the  idea  of  self, 
that  impression  must  continue  invariably  the  same  through 
the  whole  course  of  our  lives,  since  self  is  supposed  to  exist 
after  that  manner.  But  there  is  no  impression  constant  and 
invariable.  Pain  and  pleasure,  grief  and  joy,  passions  and 
sensations  succeed  each  other,  and  never  all  exist  at  Ihe  same 
time.  It  cannot,  therefore,  be  from  any  of  tiiese  impressions, 
or  from  any  other,  that  the  idea  of  self  is  derived ;  and,  con- 
sequently, there  is  no  such  idea.'  Again:  ^  When  I  enter 
most  intimately  into  what  is  called  myself,  I  always  stumble 
on  some  particular  perception  of  heat  or  cold,  light  or  shade, 
love  or  hatred,  pain  or  pleasure.  I  never  can  catch  myself 
at  any  time  without  a  perception,  and  never  can  ob- 
serve anything  but  the  perception.  When  my  perceptions 
are  removed  for  any  time,  as  by  sound  sleep,  so  long  am  I 
insensible  of  myself,  and  may  truly  be  said  not  to  exist.' 
Thus  '  men  are  nothing  but  a  bimdle  or  collection  of  different 
perceptions  that  succeed  each  other  with  inconceivable  rapi- 
dity, and  are  in  a  perpetual  flux  or  movement.  Our  eyes 
cannot  turn  in  their  sockets  without  varying  our  perceptions. 
Our  thought  is  still  more  variable  than  our  sight.  •  .  .  nor 
is  there  any  single  power  of  the  soul  which  remains  unal- 
terably  the  same  perhaps  for  one  moment.  .  •  •  There  is 
properly  no  simplicity  in  the  mind  at  one  time  nor  identity 
at  different'  (pp.  533  and  534). 
In  regard  to  206.  His  position  in  regard  to  ideas  of  relation  cannot  be 
relataoofl.  qq  summarily  exhibited.  It  is  from  its  ambiguity,  indeed, 
that  his  system  derives  at  once  its  plausibility  and  its  weak- 


RELATIONS,  PHILOSOPHICAL  AND  NATURAL.         171 

0668/  In  the  firfit  place,  it  is  necessary,  according  to  him, 
to  distingaish  between  ^  natural '  and  *  philosophical  relation.' 
The  latter  is  one  of  which  the  idea  is  acquired  by  the  com- 
parison of  objects,  as  distinct  &om  natural  relation  or  ^  the 
quality  by  which  two  ideas  are  connected  together  in  the 
imagination,  and  the  one  naturally '  (Le.  according  to  the 
principle  of  association)  *  introduces  the  other'  (p.  322).  Of  Hiaae- 
philosophical  relation — or,  according  to  another  form  of  ex-  ^^^  ^ 
pression,  of  *  qualities  by  which  the  ideas  of  philosophical  ***' 
relation  are  produced ' — seven  kinds  are  enumerated ;  viz. 
'  resemblance,  identity,  relations  of  time  and  place,  propor- 
tion in  quantity  and  number,  degrees  in  quality,  contrariety, 
and  causation'  (ibid.,  and  p.  872).  Some  of  these  do,  some 
do  not,  apparently  correspond  to  the  qualities  by  which  the 
mind  is  naturally  *  conyeyed  from  one  idea  to  another ; '  or 
which,  in  other  words,  constitute  the  '  gentle  force '  that  de- 
termines the  order  in  which  ihe  imagination  habitually  puts 
together  ideas.  Freedom  in  the  conjunction  of  ideas,  indeed, 
is  implied  in  the  term  'imagination,'  which  is  only  thus 
differenced  from  '  memory ;'  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  com- 
monly only  connects  ideas  which  are  related  to  each  other  in 
the  way  either  of  resemblance,  or  of  contiguity  in  time  and 
place,  or  of  cause  'and  effect.  Other  relations  of  the  philo- 
sophical sort  are  the  opposite  of  natural.  Thus,  *  distance 
will  be  allowed  by  philosophers  to  be  a  true  relation,  because 
we  acquire  an  idea  of  it  by  the  comparing  of  objects ;  but  in 
a  common  way  we  say,  '^  that  nothing  can  be  more  distant 
than  such  or  such  things  from  each  other ;  nothing  can  have 
less  relation  " '  (ibid.). 

207.  Hume's  classification  of  philosophical  relations  evi-  It  oone- 
dently  serves  the  same  purpose  as  Locke's,  of  the  *four  sorts  toLocke's 
of  agreement  or  disagreement  between  ideas,'  in  the  per-  acconnt  of 
ception  of  which  knowledge  consists;*  but  there  are  some  ^Z^^^ 
important  discrepancies.      Locke's  second  sort,  which  he  between 
awkwardly  describes  as  '  agreement  or  disagreement  in  the  ^^^^^ 
way  of  relation,'  may  fairly  be  taken  to  cover  three  of  Hume's 
kinds ;  viz.  relations  of  time  and  place,  proportion  in  quan- 
tity or  number,  and  degrees  in  any  quality.     About  Locke's 
first  sort,  *  identity  and  diversity,'  there  is  more  difBiculty. 
Under  *  identity,'  as  was  pointed  out  above,  he  includes  the 

*  See  above,  paiagraph  25  and  the  passagee  from  Locke  there  referred  to. 


172  GENERAL  INTRODUCrnON. 

xelations  which  Hume  distinguishes  as  'identity  proper*  and 
^  resemblance/  *  Diversity*  at  first  sight  might  seem  to  cor- 
respond to '  contrariety ;'  bnt  the  latter,  according  to  Hume's 
usage,  is  much  more  restricted  in  meaning.  Difference  of 
number  and  difference  of  kind,  which  he  distinguishes  as  the 
opposites  severally  of  identity  and  resemblance,  though  they 
come  under  Locke's  '  diversity,'  are  not  by  Hume  considered 
relations  at  all,  on  the  principle  that '  no  relation  of  any  kind 
can  subsist  without  some  degree  of  resemblance.'  They  are 
'  rather  a  negation  of  relation  than  anything  real  and  positive/ 
'  Contrariety '  he  reckons  only  to  obtain  between  ideas  of  ex- 
istence and  non-existence,  '  which  are  plainly  resembling  as 
implying  both  of  them  an  idea  of  the  object ;  though  the 
latter  excludes  the  object  from  all  times  and  places  in  which 
it  is  supposed  not  to  exist'  (p.  323).  There  remain  'cause 
and  effect '  in  Hume's  list ; ' co-existence'  and  'real  existence' 
in  Locke's.  'Co-existence'  is  not  expressly  identified  by 
Locke  with  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  but  it  is  with 
'  necessaiy  connection.'  It  means  specially,  it  will  be  remem- 
bered,^ the  co-existence  of  ideas,  not  as  constituents  of  a 
'nominal  essence,'  but  as  qualities  of  real  substances  in 
nature;  and  our  knowledge  of  this  depends  on  our  knowledge 
of  necessaiy  connection  between  the  qualities,  either  as  one 
supposing  the  other  (which  is  the  form  of  necessary  connection 
between  primary  qualities),  or  as  one  being  the  effect  of  the 
other  (which  is  the  form  of  necessary  connection  between  the 
ideas  of  secondary  qualities  and  the  primaiy  ones).  Having 
no  knowledge  of  necessary  connection  as  in  real  substances, 
we  have  none  of  '  co-existence '  in  the  above  sense,  but  only 
of  the  present  union  of  ideas  in  any  particular  experiment.' 
The  parallel  between  this  doctrine  of  Locke's  and  Hume's  of 
cause  and  effect  will  appear  as  we  proceed.  To  '  real  exist- 
ence,' since  the  knowledge  of  it  according  to  Locke's  account 
is  not  a  perception  of  agreement  between  ideas  at  all,  it  ia 
not  strange  that  nothing  should  correspond  in  Hume's  list  of 
relations. 
Oonld  208.  It  is  his  method  of  dealing  with  these  ideas  of  philo- 

^^\r"'  8opl^i<5al  relation  that  is  specially  characteristic  of  Hume, 
admit  idea  Let  US,  then.  Consider  how  the  notion  of  relation  altogether  is 
ofrel^on   affected  by  his  reduction  of  the  world  of  consciousness  to 

nt  aiir  *^ 

'  See  above,  paragraph  122. 

*  L^cke,  Book  it.  sec.  iii.  chap.  xiv. ;  and  above,  paragraph  121  and  122. 


HOW  ARE  roEAS  OF  RELATION  POSSIBLE?  173 

impressions  and  ideas.  What  is  an  impression  9  To  this, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  only  direct  answer  given  by  him  is  that 
it  is  a  feeling  which  mnst  be  more  lively  before  it  becomes 
less  so.^  For  a  fnrther  account  of  what  is  to  be  understood 
by  it  we  must  look  to  the  passages  where  the  goveming 
terms  of  *  school-metaphysics '  are,  one  after  the  other,  shown 
to  be  unmeaning,  because  not  taken  from  impressions.  Thus, 
when  the  idea  of  substance  is  to  be  reduced  to  an  '  unintel- 
ligible chimsera,'  it  is  asked  whether  it  *  be  derived  from  the 
impressions  of  sensation  or  reflection  9  If  it  be  conveyed  to 
us  by  our  senses,  I  ask,  which  of  them,  and  after  what 
manner  ?  K  it  be  perceived  by  the  eyes,  it  must  be  a  colour ; 
if  by  the  ears,  a  sound ;  if  by  the  palate,  a  taste ;  and  so  of 
the  other  senses.  But  I  believe  none  will  assert  that  sub- 
stance IB  either  a  colour,  or  a  sound,  or  a  taste.  The  idea 
of  substance  must  therefore  be  derived  from  an  impression  of 
reflection,  if  it  really  exist.  But  the  impressions  of  reflectiou 
resolve  themselves  into  our  passions  and  emotions'  (p.  824). 
From  the  polemic  against  abstract  ideas  we  learn  frirther 
that  *  the  appearance  of  an  object  to  the  senses '  is  the  same 
thing  as  an  '  impression  becoming  present  to  the  mind '  (p. 
327).  That  is  to  say,  when  we  talk  of  an  impression  of  an\  y' 
object,  it  is  not  to  be  understood  that  the  feeling  is  deter-  \iy 
mined  by  reference  to  anything  other  than  itself:  it  is  itself ' 
the  object.  To  the  same  purpose,  in  tlie  criticism  of  the* 
notion  of  an  external  world,  we  are  told  that  *  the  senses  are 
incapable  of  giving  rise  to  the  notion  of  the  continued  exist- 
ence of  their  objects,  after  they  no  longer  appear  to  the 
senses ;  for  that  is  a  contradiction  in  terms '  (since  the  ap- 
pearance is  the  object) ;  and  that  ^  they  offer  not  their  im- 
pressions as  the  images  of  something  distinct,  or  independent, 
or  external,  because  they  convey  to  us  nothing  but  a  single 
perception,  and  never  give  us  tiie  least  intimation  of  any- 
thing  beyond'  (p.  479).  The  distinction  between  impres- 
sion of  sensation  and  impression  of  reflection,  then,  can- 
not, any  more  than  that  between  impression  and  idea,  be 
r^^arded  as  either  really  or  apparently  a  distinction  between 
outer  and  inner.  'All  impressions  are  internal  and  perishing 
existences'  (p.  483);  and,  'everything  that  enters  the  mind 
being  in  reality  as  the  impression,  'tis  impossible  anything 
should  to  feeling  appear  different'  (p.  480). 

*  See  above,  paragraphB  195  and  197. 


174 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Only  in  re- 
gard to 
identity 
and  causa- 
tion that 
he  Bees 
any  diffi- 
culty. 

These  he 
treats  as 
fictions  re- 
sulting 
from 
'natural 
relations ' 
of  ideas  ; 


209.  This  amonnts  to  a  full  acceptance  of  Berkeley's  doc- 
trine of  sense;  and  the  question  necessarily  arises — such  being 
the  impression,  and  all  ideas  being  impressions  grown  weaker, 
can  there  be  an  idea  of  relation  at  all  9  Is  it  not  open  to  the 
same  challenge  which  Hume  offers  to  those  who  talk  of  an 
idea  of  substance  or  of  spirit  ?  *  It  is  from  some  one  impres- 
sion that  every  real  idea  is  derived.'  What,  then,  is  the  one 
impression  from  which  the  idea  of  relation  is  derived  9  *  If 
it  be  perceived  by  the  eyes,  it  must  be  a  colour ;  if  by  the 
ears,  a  sound ;  if  by  the  palate,  a  taste ;  and  so  of  the  other 
senses.'  There  remain  ^our  passions  and  emotions;'  but 
what  passion  or  emotion  is  a  resemblance,  or  a  proportion, 
or  a  relation  of  cause  and  effect  P 

210.  Bespect  for  Hume's  thoroughness  as  a  philosopher 
must  be  qualified  b^  the  observation  that  he  does  not  afctempt 
to  meet  tiiis  difficulty  in  its  generality,  but  only  as  it  affects 
the  relations  of  identity  and  causation.  The  truth  seems  to 
be  that  he  wrote  with  Berkeley  steadily  before  his  mind ;  and 
it  was  Berkeley's  treatment  of  these  two  relations  in  parti- 
cular as  not  sensible  but  intelligible,  and  his  assertion  of  a 
philosophic  Theism  on  the  strength  of  their  mere  intelligi- 
bility, that  determined  Hume,  since  it  would  have  been  an 
anachronism  any  longer  to  treat  them  as  sensible,  to  dispose 
of  them  altogether.  The  condition  of  his  doing  so  with 
success  was  that,  however  unwarrantably,  he  should  treat 
the  other  relations  as  sensible.  The  language,  which  seems 
to  express  ideas  of  the  two  questionable  relations,  he  has  to 
account  for  as  the  result  of  certain  impressions  of  reflection, 
called  *  propensities  to  feign,'  which  in  their  turn  have  to  be 
accounted  for  as  resulting  from  the  natv/ral  relations  of  ideas 
according  to  the  definition  of  these  quoted  above,*  as  *  the 
qualities  by  which  one  idea  habitually  introduces  another.* 
Among  these,  as  we  saw,  he  included  not  only  resemblance 
and  contiguity  in  time  or  place,  but  ^  cause  and  effect.' 
*  There  is  no  relation,'  he  says,  *  which  produces  a  stronger 
connection  in  the  fisincy  than  this.'  But  in  this,  as  in  much 
of  the  language  which  gives  the  first  two  Parts  their  plausi- 
bility, he  is  taking  advantage  of  received  notions  on  the  part 
of  the  reader,  which  it  is  the  work  of  the  rest  of  the  book  to 
set  aside.   In  any  sense,  according  to  him,  in  which  it  differs 

>  See  abore,  pangraph  206. 


IDEA  OF  RESEMBLANCE.  175 

from  usual  contiguity,  the  relation  of  cause  and  e£Pect  is  itself 
reducible  to  a  *  propensity  to  feign/  arising  from  the  other 
natural  relations ;  but  when  the  reader  is  told  of  its  producing 
*  a  strong  connection  in  the  fancy/  he  is  not  apt  to  think  of 
it  as  itself  nothing  more  than  the  product  of  such  a  con- 
nection.    For  the  present,  however,  we  have  only  to  point 
out  that  Hume,  when  he  co-ordinates  it  with  the  other 
natural  relations,  must  be  understood  to  do  so  provisionally. 
According  to  him  it  is  derived,  while  they  are  primary.    Upon 
them,  then,  rested  the  possibility  of  filling  the  gap  between  the  i-o-  from 
occurrence  of  single  impressions,  none  *  determined  by  refer-  JJJ[^  ^^^ 
ence  to  anything  other  than  itself,'  and  what  we  are  pleased  contiguity, 
to  call  our  knowledge,  with  its  fictions  of  mind  and  thing, 
of  real  and   apparent,  of  necessary  as  distinct  from  usual 
connection. 

21 1.  We  will  begin  with  Resemblance.  As  to  this,  it  will 
be  said,  it  is  an  affectation  of  subtlety  to  question  whether 
there  can  be  an  impression  of  it  or  no.  The  difiScxdty  only 
arises  from  our  regarding  the  perception  of  resemblance  as 
different  from,  and  subsequent  to,  the  resembling  sensations ; 
whereas,  in  fact,  the  occurrence  of  two  impressions  of  sense, . 
such  as  (let  us  say)  yellow  and  red,  is  itself  the  impression  of 
their  likeness  and  unlikeness.  Hume  himself,  it  may  be 
further  urged,  at  any  rate  in  regard  to  resemblance,  antici- 
pates this  solution  of  an  imaginaiy  difficulty  by  his  important 
division  of  philosophical  relations  into  two  classes  (p.  872) — 
such  as  depend  entirely  on  the  ideas  which  we  compare 
together,  and  such  as  may  be  changed  without  any  change 
in  the  ideas ' — and  by  his  inclusion  of  resemblance  in  the 
former  class. 


212.  Now  we  gladly  admit  the  mistake  of  supposing  that  X01 
sensations  undetermined  by  relation  first  occur,  and  that  ^^!,^^ 
afterwards  we  become  conscious  of  their  relation  in  the  don? 
way  of  likeness  or  unlikeness.  Apart  from  such  relation, 
it  is  true,  the  sensations  would  be  nothing.  But  this  ad- 
mission involves  an  important  qualification  of  the  doctrine 
that  impressions  are  single,  and  that  the  mind  (according 
to  Hume's  awkward  figure)  is  a  ^bundle  or  collection  of 
these,'  succeeding  each  other  '  in  a  perpetual  flux  or  move- 
ment.' It  implies  that  the  single  impression  in  its  singleness 
is  what  it  is  through  relation  to  another,  which  must  there- 


176  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

fore  be  present  along  with  it;  and  that  thus,  thongh  they 
may  occur  in  a  perpetual  flnx  of  succession — every  turn  of 
the  eyes  in  their  sockets,  as  Hume  truly  says,  giving  a  new 
one — ^yet,  just  so  £Eir  as  they  are  qualified  by  likeness  or  un- 
likeness  to  each  other,  they  must  be  taken  out  of  that  suc- 
cession by  something  which  is  not  itself  in  it,  but  is  indivisibly 
present  to  every  moment  of  it.  This  we  may  call  soul,  or 
mind,  or  what  we  will ;  but  we  must  not  identify  it  with  the 
brain^  either  directly  or  by  implication  (as  we  do  when  we 
'  refer  to  the  anatomist '  for  an  account  of  it),  since  by  the 
brain  is  meant  something  material,  ue.  divisible,  which  the 
imifying  subject  spoken  of,  as  feeling  no  less  than  as  thinking, 
cannot  be.  In  short,  any  such  modification  of  Hume's  doc- 
trine of  the  singleness  and  successiveness  of  impressions  as 
will  entitle  us  to  speak  of  their  carrying  with  them,  though 
single  and  successive,  the  consciousness  of  their  resemblance 
to  each  other,  will  also  entitle  us  to  speak  of  their  carrying 
with  them  a  reference  to  that  which  is  not  itself  any  single 
impression,  but  is  permanent  throughout  the  impressions; 
and  the  whole  ground  of  Hume's  polemic  against  the  idea 
of  self  or  spirit  is  removed.* 
Distiudaon  213.  The  above  admission,  however,  does  not  dispose  of 
between  the  qucstion  about  ideas  of  resemblance.  A  feeling  qualified 
foei^*°*  by  relation  of  resemblance  to  other  feelings  is  a  different 
and  idea  of  thing  from  an  idea  of  that  relation — different  with  all  the 
JJ^^  difference  which  Hume  ignores  between  feeling  and  thought, 
between  consciousness  and  self-consciousness.  The  qualifi- 
cation of  successive  feelings  by  mutual  relation  implies, 
indeed,  the  presence  to  them  of  a  subject  permanent  and 
inmiaterial  (i.  e.  not  in  time  or  space) ;  but  it  does  not  imply 
that  this  subject  presents  them  to  itself  as  related  objects, 
permanent  with  its  own  permanence,  which  abide  and  may 
be  considered  apart  from  ^  the  circumstances  in  time '  of  their 
occurrence.  Yet  such  presentation  is  supposed  by  all  language 
other  than  interjectional.  It  is  it  alone  which  can  give  us 
names  of  things,  as  distinct  from  noises  prompted  by  the 
feelings  as  they  occur.  Of  course  it  is  open  to  any  one  to 
my  that  by  an  idea  of  resemblance  he  does  not  mean  any 
thought  involving  the  self-conscious  presentation  spoken  of, 
but  merely  a  feeling  qualified  by  resemblance,  and  not  at  its 

>  It  18,  of  coarse,  qnite  a  different      properly,  the  whole  body)  is  oiganie  to  it 
thing  to  say  that  the  brain  (ozv  more  '  See  above,  paragraph  206. 


HOW  IS  'COLLECTION  OF  IDEAS'  POSSIBLE?        177 

liyeliest  stage.  Thus  Hume  tella  ns  that  by  '  idea '  he  merely 
means  a  feeling  less  lively  than  it  has  been,  and  that  by  idea 
of  anything  he  implies  no  reference  to  anything  ofcher  than 
the  idea,^  but  means  just  a  related  idea,  i.e,  a  feeling  qualified 
by  *  natural  relation '  to  other  feelings.  It  is  by  this  thought- 
ful abnegation  of  thought,  as  we  shall  find,  that  he  arrives  at 
his  sceptical  result.  But  language  (for  the  reason  mentioned) 
would  not  allow  him  to  be  faithful  to  the  abnegation.  He 
could  not  make  such  a  profession  without  being  fabe  to  it. 
This  appears  abready  in  his  account  of  '  complex '  and  ^  ab- 
stract '  ideas. 

214.  His  account  of  the  idea  of  a  substance  (p.  324)  is  Substancw 
simply  Locke's,  as  Locke's  would  become  upon  elimination  of  —«>ii^- 
the  notion  that  there  is  a  real '  something '  in  which  the  col-  ideas. 
lection  of  ideas  subsist,  and  from  which  they  result.     It  thus 
avoids  all  difficulties  about  the  relation  between  nominal  and 

real  essence.  Just  as  Locke  says  that  in  the  case  of  a  '  mixed 
mode '  the  nominal  essence  is  the  real,  so  Hume  would  say  of 
a  substance.  The  only  difference  is  that  while  the  collection 
of  ideas,  called  a  mixed  mode,  does  not  admit  of  addition 
without  a  change  of  its  name,  that  called  a  substance  does. 
Upon  discovery  of  the  solubility  of  gold  in  aqua  regia  we  add 
that  idea  to  the  collection,  to  which  the  name  ^  gold '  has  pre- 
viously been  assigned,  without  disturbance  in  the  use  of  the 
name,  because  the  name  already  covers  not  only  the  ideas  of 
certain  qualities,  but  also  the  idea  of  a  *  principle  of  union  ' 
between  them,  which  will  extend  to  any  ideas  presented 
along  with  them.  As  this  principle  of  union,  however,  is  not 
itself  any  *  real  essence,'  but  ^  part  of  the  complex  idea,'  the 
question,  so  troublesome  to  Locke,  whether  a  proposition 
about  gold  asserts  real  co-existence  or  only  the  inclusion  of 
an  idea  in  a  nominal  essence,  will  be  supei^uous.  How  the 
*■  principle  of  union '  is  to  be  explained,  will  appear  below.' 

215.  There  are  names,  then,  which  represent  '  collections  How  can 
of  ideas.'     How  can  we  explain  such  coUection  if  ideas  are  ^•^f  l^ 
merely  related  feelings  grown  fainter?    Do  we,  when  we  use  coUecud? 
one  of  these  names  significantly,  recall,  though  in  a  fainter 

form,  a  seres  of  feelings  that  we  have  experienced  in  the 
process  of  collection?  Does  the  chemist,  when  he  says  that 
gold  is  soluble  in  aqua  regia,  recall  the  visual  and  tactual 

>  See  abofve,  paragraph  208.  *  Paragraph  303,  and  the  following. 

vol*-  ^-  ^    ><s^E  LiF;;; 

f       ^^        rrTHF 

UN  ^-^^F. "RSI 


178  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

feeling  wliich  he  experienced  when  he  found  it  soluble?  If 
80,  as  that  feeling  took  its  character  from  relation  to  a  multi- 
tude of  other  ^  complex  ideas,'  he  must  on  the  same  principle 
recall  in  endless  series  the  sensible  occurrences  from  which 
each  constituent  of  each  constituent  of  these  was  deriyed ; 
and  a  like  process  must  be  gone  through  when  gold  is  pro- 
nounced ductile,  malleable,  &c.  But  this  would  be,  according 
to  the  figurewhich  Hume  himself  adopts,  to  recall  a  'perpetual 
flux.'  The  very  term  *  collection  of  ideas,'  indeed,  if  this  be 
the  meaning  of  ideas,  is  an  absurdity,  for  how  can  a  perpetual 
flux  be  collected  ?  If  we  turn  for  a  solution  of  the  difficulty 
to  the  chapter  where  Hume  expressly  discusses  the  significance 
of  general  names,  we  shall  find  that  it  is  not  the  question  we 
have  here  put,  and  which  flows  directly  from  his  account  of 
ideas,  that  he  is  there  treating,  but  an  entirely  different  one, 
and  one  that  could  not  be  raised  till  for  related  feeling  had 
been  substituted  the  thought  of  an  object  under  relations. 
Are  there  216.  The  chapter  mentioned  concerns  the  question  which 
WeM?^  arises  out  of  Locke's  pregnant  statement  that  words  and 
Berkeley  ideas  are  *  particular  in  their  existence  '  even  when  *  general 
Mid. 'yeg  ^^  their  signification.'  From  this  statement  we  saw'  that 
Berkeley  derived  his  explanation  of  the  apparent  generality 
of  ideas — the  explanation,  namely,  which  reduces  it  to  a  rela- 
tion, yet  not  such  a  one  as  would  affect  the  nature  of  the  idea 
it-self,  which  is  and  remains  ^particular,'  but  a  symbolical 
relation  between  it  and  other  particular  ideas  for  which  it  is 
taken  to  stand.  An  idea,  however,  that  carries  with  it  a 
consciousness  of  symbolical  relation  to  other  ideas,  cannot 
but  be  qualified  by  this  relation.  The  generality  must 
become  part  of  its  '  nature,'  and,  accordingly,  the  distinction 
between  idea  and  thing  being  obliterated,  of  the  nature  of 
things.  Thus  Berkeley  virtually  arrives  at  a  result  which 
renders  unmeaning  his  preliminary  exclusion  of  universality 
from  *the  absolute,  positive  nature  or  conception  of  anything.* 
Hume  seeks  to  avoid  it  by  putting  *  custom '  in  the  place  of 
the  consciousness  of  symbolical  relation.  True  to  his  voca- 
tion of  explaining  away  all  functions  of  thought  that  will  not 
sort  with  the  treatment  of  it  as  ^  decaying  sense,'  he  would 
resolve  that  idea  of  a  relation  between  certain  ideas,  in  virtue 
of  which  one  is  taken  to  stand  for  the  rest,  into  the  de  facto 

^  Abore,  pamgraphs  182  and  188. 


irUME'S  NOMINALISM.  176 

sequence  upon  one  of  them  of  the  rest.  Here,  as  everywhere 
else,  he  would  make  related  feelings  do  instead  of  relations 
of  ideas  ;  but  whether  the  related  feelings,  as  he  is  obliged 
to  describe  them,  do  not  already  presuppose  relations  of  ideas 
in  distinction  from  feelings,  remains  to  be  seen. 

217.  The  question  about  *  generality  of  signification,'  as  Hume 'no* 
he  puts  it,  comes  to  this.     In  every  proposition,  though  its  «»™ply- 
subject  be  a  common  noun,  we  necessarily  present  to  our- 
selves some  one  individual  object  'with  aU  its  particular 
circumstances  and  proportions.'     How  then  can  the  propo- 
sition be  general  in  denotation  and  connotation  P    How  can 

it  be  made  with  reference  to  a  multitude  of  individual  objects 
other  than  that  presented  to  the  mind,  and  how  can  it  con- 
cern only  such  of  the  qualities  of  the  latter  as  are  common 
to  the  multitude  ?  The  first  part  of  the  question  is  answered 
as  follows  : — *  When  we  have  found  a  resemblance  among  jj^^  j,^ 
several  objects  that  often  occur  to  us,  we  apply  the  same  accounts 
name  to  all  of  them  .  .  .  whatever  differences  may  appear  ^p^p^r- 
among  them.  After  we  have  acquired  a  custom  of  this  kind,  ance  of 
the  hearing  of  that  name  revives  the  idea  of  one  of  these  *^*^«j^^«'"g 
objects,  and  makes  the  imagination  conceive  it  with  all  its 
particular  circumstances  and  proportions.  But  as  the  same 
word  is  supposed  to  have  been  frequently  applied  to  other 
individuals,  that  are  different  in  many  respects  from  that 
idea  which  is  immediately  present  to  the  mind,  the  word 
not  being  able  to  revive  the  idea  of  all  these  individuals,  only 
touches  the  soul  and  revives  that  custom  which  we  have 
acquired  by  surveying  them.  They  are  not  really  and  in 
feet  present  to  the  mind,  but  only  in  power.  .  .  .  The  word 
raises  up  an  individual  idea  along  with  a  certain  custom, 
and  that  custom  produces  any  other  individual  one  for  which 
we  may  have  occasion*  •  •  .  Thus,  should  we  mention  the 
word  triangle  and  form  the  idea  of  a  particular  equilateral 
one  to  correspond  to  it,  and  should  we  afterwards  assert 
that  the  three  angles  of  a  triangle  are  equal  to  each  other,  the 
other  individuals  of  a  scalenum  and  isosceles,  which  we  over- 
looked at  first,  immediately  crowd  in  upon  us  and  make  us 
perceive  the  falsehood  of  this  proposition,  though  it  be  true 
with  relation  to  that  idea  which  we  had  formed '  (p.  328). 

218.  Next,  as  to  the  question  concerning  connotation: — 
'The mind  woidd  never  have  dreamed  of  distinguishingafigure 
from  the  body  figured,  as  being  in  reality  neither  distin- 

M  2 


180  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

gnisliable  nor  different  nor  separable,  did  it  not  observe  that 
even  in  this  simplicity  there  might  be  contained  many  diffe- 
rent resemblances  and  relations.  Thns,  when  a  globe  of 
white  marble  is  presented,  we  receive  only  the  impression  of 
a  white  colour  disposed  in  a  certain  form,  nor  are  we  able  to 
distinguish  and  separate  the  colour  from  the  form.  But 
observing  afterwards  a  globe  of  black  marble  and  a  cube  of 
white,  and  comparing  them  with  our  former  object^  we  find 
two  separate  resemblances  in  what  formerly  seemed,  and 
really  is,  perfectly  inseparable.  After  a  little  more  practice 
of  this  kind,  we  begin  to  distinguish  the  figure  from,  the 
colour  by  a  distinction  of  reason ; — i,e,  we  consider  the  figure 
and  colour  together,  since  they  are,  in  effect,  the  same  and 
indistinguishable ;  but  still  view  them  in  different  aspects 
according  to  the  resemblances  of  which  they  are  susceptible. 
...  A  person  who  desires  us  to  consider  the  figure  of  a 
globe  of  white  marble  without  thinking  on  its  colour,  desires 
an  impossibility ;  but  his  meaning  is,  that  we  should  consider 
the  colour  and  figure  together,  but  still  keep  in  our  eye  the 
resemblance  to  the  globe  of  black  marble  or  that  to  any  other 
globe  whatever'  (p.  333). 
Hii  ae*  219.  It  is  clear  that  the  process  described  in  these  passages 

*^*"°MSt  supposes  *  ab  initio  *  the  conversion  of  a  feeling  into  a  con- 
' ideas* are  ception;  in  other  words,  the  substitution  of  the  definite 
concep-  individuality  of  a  thing,  thought  of  under  attributes,  for  the 
feelings,  mere  singleness  in  time  of  a  feeling  that  occurs  after  another 
and  before  a  third.  The  ^  finding  of  resemblances  and  differ* 
ences  among  objects  that  often  occur  to  us '  implies  that 
each  object  is  distinguished  as  one  and  abiding  from  mani- 
fold occurrences,  in  the  way  of  related  feelings,  in  which  it 
is  presented  to  us,  and  that  these  accordingly  are  regarded 
as  repref^enting  permanent  relations  or  qualities  of  the  object. 
Thus  from  being  related  feelings,  whether  more  or  less  *  viva- 
cious,' they  have  become,  in  the  proper  sense,  ideas  of 
relation.  The  difficulty  about  the  use  of  general  names,  as 
Hume  puts  it,  really  arises  just  from  the  extent  to  which 
this  process  of  determination  by  ideas  of  relation,  and  vnth 
it  the  removal  of  the  object  of  thought  fix)m  simple  feeling, 
is  supposed  to  have  gone.  It  is  because  the  idea  is  so  com- 
plex in  its  individuality,  and  because  this  qualification  is  not 
understood  to  be  the  work  of  thought,  by  comparison  and 


NO  'GENERAL  IDEAS.*  181 

contrast  accnmulating  attributes  on  an  object  which  it  itself 
constitutes,  but  is  regarded  as  given  ready-made  in  an  im- 
pression (i.6.  a  feeling),  that  the  question  arises  whether  a 
general  proposition  is  really  possible  or  no.  To  all  intents 
and  purposes  Hume  decides  that  it  is  not.  The  mind  is  so 
tied  down  to  the  particular  collection  of  qualities  which  is 
given  to  it  or  which  it  *  finds/  that  it  cannot  present  one  of 
them  to  itself  without  presenting  all.  Having  never  found 
a  triangle  that  is  not  equilateral  or  isosceles  or  scalene, 
we  cannot  imagine  one,  for  ideas  can  only  be  copies  of 
impressions,  and  the  imagination,  though  it  has  a  certain 
freedom  in  combining  what  it  finds,  can  invent  nothing  that 
it  does  not  find.  Thus  the  idea,  represented  by  a  general 
name  and  of  which  an  assertion,  general  in  form,  is  made, 
must  always  have  a  multitude  of  other  qualities  besides  those 
common  to  it  with  the  other  individuals  to  which  the  name 
is  applicable.  If  any  of  these,  however,  were  included  in  the 
predicate  of  the  proposition,  the  sleeping  custom,  which  de- 
termines the  mind  to  pass  from  the  idea  present  to  it  to  the 
others  to  which  the  name  has  been  applied,  would  be  awak- 
ened, and  it  would  be  seen  at  once  that  the  predicate  is  not 
true  of  them.  When  I  make  a  general  statement  about  ^  the 
hoi'se,'  there  must  be  present  to  my  mind  some  particular 
horse  of  my  acquaintance,  but  if  on  the  strength  of  this  I 
asserted  that  ^  the  horse  is  a  grey-haired  animal,'  the  custom 
of  applying  the  name  without  reference  to  colour  would  return 
upon  me  and  correct  me — as  it  would  not  if  the  predicate 
were  *  four-footed.' 

220.  It  would  seem  then  that  the  predicate  may,  though  ^J  ^^{^ 
the  subject  cannot,  represent  either  a  single  quality,  or  a  set  the  point 
of  qualities  which  falls  far  short  even  of  those  common  to  the  i°  wgard 
class,  much  more  of  those  which  characterise  any  individual,  dioau  ot^ 
If  I  can  think  these  apart,  or  have  an  idea  of  them,  as  the  propoBi- 
predicate  of  a  proposition,  why  not  (it  may  be  asked)  as  the 
subject?     It  may  be  said,  indeed,  with  truth,  that  it  is  a 
mistake  to  think  of  the  subject  as  representing  one  idea  and 
the  predicate  another ;  that  the  proposition  as  a  whole  re- 
presents one  idea,  in  the  sense  of  a  conception  of  relation 
between  attributes,  and  that  at  bottom  this  account  of  it  is 
consistent  with  Locke's  definition  of  knowledge  as  a  percep- 
tion of  relation  between  '  ideas,'  since  with  him  ^  ideas '  and 


tlODB. 


18£  GENERAL  INTKODUCTION. 

'qualities'  are  used  interchangeably.'     It  is  no  less  true, 
however^  that  the  relation  between  attributes^  which  the 
proposition  states,  is  a  relation  between  them  in  an  indi- 
vidual subject.     It  is  the  nature  of  the  individuality  of  this 
subject,  then,  that  is  really  in  question.    Mast  it,  as  Hume 
supposed,  be  ^  considered '  under  other  qualities  than  those 
to  which  the  predicate  relates  ?    When  the  proposition  only 
concerns  the  relation  between  certain  qualities  of  a  spherical 
figure,  must  the  figure  still  be  considered  as  of  a  certaiii 
colour  and  material? 
As  to  the        221.  The  possibility  of  such  a  question  being  raised  implies 
equiTo^  ^*  *^**  *^®  ^*®P  ^"^  ^®^  already  taken,  which  Hume  ignored, 
catesbe-      from  feeling  to  thought.     His  doctrine  on  the  matter  arises 
mmrieness    ^^  ^*^  mental  equivocation,  of  which  the  effects  on  Locke 
of  feeling    have  been  already  noticed,^  between  the  mere  singleness  of  a 
v^ua^k      f®^l"ig  i^  *i°^c  ^°d  the  individuality  of  the  object  of  thought 
of  coDcep-    as  a  complex  of  relations.     If  the  impression  is  the  single 
tion.  feeling  which  disappears  with  a  turn  of  the  head,  and  the 

idea  a  weaker  impression,  every  idea  must  indeed  be  in  one 
sense  individual,'  but  in  a  sense  that  renders  all  predication 
impossible  because  it  empties  the  idea  of  all  content.  Eeally, 
according  to  Hume's  doctrine  of  general  names,  it  is  indivi-* 
dual  in  a  sense  which  is  the  most  remote  opposite  of  this,  as 
a  multitude  of  ^  different  resemblances  and  relations '  in  *  sim- 
plicity.' It  is  just  such  an  individual  as  Locke  supposed  to 
be  found  (so  to  speak)  ready-made  in  nature,  and  fi'om  which 
he  supposed  the  mind  successively  to  abstract  ideas  less  and 
less  determinate.  Such  an  object  Hume,  coming  after  Ber- 
keley, could  not  regard  iu  Locke's  fashion  as  a  separate 
material  existence  outside  consciousness.  The  idea  with  him 
is  a  *  copy '  not  of  a  thing  but  of  an  *  impression,'  but  to  the 
impression  he  transfers  all  that  individualization  by  qualities 
which  Locke  had  ascribed  to  the  substance  found  in  nature  ; 
and  from  the  impression  again  transfers  it  to  the  idea  which 
*is  but  the  weaker  impression.'  Thus  the  singleness  in  time 
of  the  impression  becomes  the  '  simplicity '  of  an  object '  con- 
taining many  different  resemblances  and  relations,'  and  the 
individuality  of  the  subject  of  a  proposition,  instead  of  being 
regarded  in  its  true  light  as  a  temporary  isolation  fix)m  other 
relations  of  those  for  the  time  under  view — an  individuality 

'  See  abovft,  paragraph  17. 

'  See  above,  paragraphs  47,  95,  &c 


ALL  PROPOSITIONS  EEALLY  SmGULAR.  188 

whicli  is  perpetuallj  shifting  its  limits  as  thought  proceeds — 
becomes  an  indiyidnality  fixed  once  for  all  by  what  is  given 
in  the  impression.  Because,  as  is  supposed,  I  can  only  ^  see ' 
a  globe  as  of  a  certain  colour  and  material,  I  can  only  think 
of  it  as  such.  If  the  *  sight '  of  it  had  been  rightly  inter- 
preted as  itself  a  complex  work  of  thought,  successively  de- 
taching felt  things  from  the  '  flux '  of  feelings  and  determining 
these  by  relations  similarly  detached,  the  difficulty  of  thinking 
certain  of  these — e.g,  those  designated  as  *  figure' — apart 
from  the  rest  would  have  disappeared.  It  would  have  been 
seen  that  this  was  merely  to  separate  in  reflective  analysis 
what  had  been  gradually  put  together  in  the  successive 
synthesis  of  perception.  But  such  an  interpretation  of  the 
supposed  datvmt  of  sense  would  have  been  to  elevate  thought 
from  the  position  which  Hume  assigned  to  it,  as  a  ^  decaying 
sense,'  to  that  of  being  itself  the  organizer  of  the  world  which 
it  knows.' 

222.  Here,  then,   as   elsewhere,    the   embarrassment  of  Besuitisa 
Hume's  doctrine  is  nothing  which  a  better  statement  of  it  ^^^ 
could  avoid.     Nay,  so  dexterous  is  his  statement^  that  only  mitspredi- 
upon  a  close  scrutiny  does  the  embarrassment  disclose  itself,  cation,  but 
To  be  faithful  at  once  to  his  reduction  of  the  impression  to  gingular. 
simple  feeling,  and  to  his  account  of  the  idea  as  a  mere  copy 
of  the  impression,  was  really  impossible.     K  he  had  kept  his 
word  in  regard  to  the  impression,  he  must  have  found  thought 
filling  the  void  left  by  the  disappearance,  under  Berkeley's 
criticism,  of  that  outward  system  of  things  which  Locke  had 
commonly  taken  for  granted.     He  preferred  fidelity  to  his 
account  of  the  idea,  and  thus  virtually  restores  the  fiction 
which  represents  the  real  world  as  consisting  of  so  many, 
materially  separate,  bundles  of  qualities — a  fiction  which  even 
Locke  in  his  better  moments  was  beginning  to  outgrow — with 
only  the  difference  that  for  the  separation  of  ^  substances '  in 
space  he  substitutes  a  separation  of  ^  impressions '  in  time. 
That  thought  (the  *  idea ')  can  but  faintly  copy  feeling  (the 
'  impression ')  he  consistently  maintains,  but  he  avails  him- 
self of  the  actual  determination  of  feeling  by  reference  to  an 
object   of  thought — the   determination  expressed  by  such 
phrases  as  impression  of  a  man,  impression  of  a  globe,  &c. — to 
charge  the  feeling  with  a  content  which  it  only  derives  from 

>  The  phrase  'decajing  sense'  belongs  to  Hobbes,  but  its  meaning  is  adoptod 
hy  Home. 


184  GENEEAL  INTRODUCTION. 

such  determinatioD^  while  yet  he  denies  it  67  this  means 
predication  can  be  accounted  for,  as  it  oonld  not  be  if  our 
consciousness  consisted  of  mere  feelings  and  their  copies,  but 
only  in  the  form  of  the  singular  proposition ;  because  the 
object  of  thought  determinei  by  relations,  being  identified 
with  a  single  feeling,  must  be  limited  by  the  '  this  *  or  *  that ' 
which  expresses  this  singleness  <tf  feeling.  It  is  really  thU 
or  tJiat  globe,  this  or  that  man,  that  is  the  subject  of  the  pro- 
position, according  to  Hume,  even  when  in  form  it  is  general. 
It  is  true  that  the  general  name  *  globe '  or  *  man  '  not  merely 
represents  a  *  particular '  globe  or  man,  though  that  is  all 
that  is  presented  to  the  mind,  but  also  ^  raises  up  a  custom 
which  produces  any  other  individual  idea  for  which  we  may 
have  occasion.'  As  this  custom,  however,  is  neither  itself  an 
idea  nor  affects  the  singleness  of  the  subject  idea,  it  does  not 
constitute  any  distinction  between  singular  and  general  pro- 
positions, but  only  between  two  sorts  of  the  singular  propo- 
sition according  as  it  does,  or  does  not,  suggest  an  indefinite 
series  of  other  singular  propositions,  in  which  the  same  qua- 
lities are  aflSrmed  of  different  individual  ideas  to  which  the 
subject-name  has  been  applied. 
All  propo-  223.  A  customary  sequence,  then,  of  individual  ideas  upon 
Ptrict^  in  ^^^^  other  is  the  reality,  which  through  the  delusion  of  words 
same  (as  we  must  suppose)  has  given  rise  to  the  fiction  of  there 

Locke's  being  such  a  thing  as  general  knowledge.  We  say  *  fiction,' 
proposi-  for  with  the  possibility  of  general  propositions,  as  the  Greek 
wal^ex^^  philosophers  once  for  all  pointed  out,  stands  or  falls  tiie  pos- 
•Rtence.  sibility  of  science.  Locke  was  so  far  aware  of  this  that,  upon 
the  same  principle  which  led  him  to  deny  the  possibility  of 
general  propositions  concerning  real  existence,  he  ^  suspected' 
a  science  of  nature  to  be  impossible,  and  only  found  an  ex- 
emption for  moral  and  mathematical  truth  from  this  con- 
demnation in  its  *  bare  ideality.'  Hume  does  away  with  the 
exemption.  He  applies  to  all  propositions  alike  the  same 
limitation  which  Locke  applies  to  those  concerning  real  ex- 
istence. With  Locke  there  may  very  well  be  a  proposition 
which  to  the  mind,  as  well  as  in  form,  is  general — one  of 
which  the  subject  is  an  *  abstract  general  idea ' — ^but  such 
proposition  *  concerns  not  existence.'  As  knowledge  of  real 
existence  is  limited  to  the  *  actual  present  sensation,'  so  a 
pi-oposition  about  such  existence  is  limited  to  what  is  given 
in  such  sensation.     It  is  a  real  truth  that  this  piece  of  gold 


HOW  ARE  SINGULAR  PROPOSITIONS  POSSIBLE?     186 

18  now  being  dissolved  in  aqua  regia,  when  the  ^  particular 
experiment'  is  going  on  under  our  eyes,  but  the  general 
proposition  ^  gold  is  soluble '  is  only  an  analysis  of  a  nominal 
essence.  With  Hume  the  distinction  between  propositions 
that  do,  and  those  that  do  not,  ^  concern  existence '  disappears. 
Every  proposition  is  on  the  same  footing  in  this  respect, 
since  it  must  needs  be  a  statement  about  an  '  i^ea,'  and  every 
idea  exists.  ^  Every  object  that  is  presented  must  necessarily 
be  existent.  .  .  .  Whatever  we  conceive,  we  conceive  to 
be  existent.  Any  idea  we  please  to  form  is  the  idea  of  a 
being ;  and  the  idea  of  a  being  is  any  idea  we  please  to  form ' 
(p.  870).  But  since,  according  to  him,  the  idea  cannot  be 
separated,  as  Locke  supposed  it  could,  from  the  conditions 
*  that  determine  it  to  this  or  that  particular  existence,'  pro- 
positions of  the  sort  which  Locke  understood  by  '  general 
propositions  concerning  substances,'  though  if  they  were 
possible  they  would  ^  concern  existence'  as  much  as  any,  are 
simply  impossible.  Hume,  in  short,  though  he  identifies  the 
real  and  nominal  essences  which  Locke  had  distinguished, 
yet  limits  the  nominal  essence  by  the  same  '  particularity  in 
space  and  time '  by  which  Locke  had  limited  the  reaL 

224.  A  great  advance  in  simplification  has  been  made  when  The  qnM« 
the  false  sort  of  *  conceptualism '  has  thus  been  got  rid  of —  tiiTi^St*- 
that  conceptualism  which  opposes  knowing  and  being  under  ^propo- 
the  notion  that  things,  though  merely  individual  in  reality,  "^°^j" 
may  be  known  as   general.      This  riddance  having  been  the  yitai 
achieved,  as  it  was  by  Hume,  the  import  of  the  proposition  ^^^ 
becomes  the  central  question  of  philosophy,  the  answer  to 
which  must  determine  our  theory  of  real  existence  just  as 
much  as  of  the  mind.     The  issue  may  be  taken  on  the  pro- 
position in  its  singular  no  less  than  in  its  general  form. 
The  weakness  of  Hume's  opponents,  indeed,  has  lain  pri- 
marily in  their  allowing  that  his  doctrine  would  account  for 
any  significant  predication  whatever,  as  distinct  from  excla- 
mations prompted  by  feelings  as  they  occur.     This  has  been 
the  inch,  which  once  yielded,  the  full  ell  of  his  nominalism 
has  been  easily  won ;  just  as  Locke's  empiricism  becomes  in- 
vincible as  soon  as  it  is  admitted  that  qualified  things  are 
'  found  in  nature '  without  any  constitutive  action  of  the 
mind.     As  the  only  effective  way  of  dealing  with  Locke  is 
to  ask, — After  abstraction  of  all  that  he  himself  admitted 
to  be  the  creation  of  thought,  what  remains  to  be  merely 


166 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


fonndP — 60  Hume  must  be  met  in  limine  by  the  questiod 
whether,  apart  from  such  ideas  of  relation  as  according*  to 
his  own  showing  are  not  simple  impressions,  so  much  as  the 
singular  proposition  is  possible.  If  not,  then  the  singulariiy 
of  such  proposition  does  not  consist  in  auy  singleness  of 
presentation  to  sense ;  it  is  not  the  *  particidarity  in  time '  of 
a  present  feeling ;  and  the  exclusion  of  generality,  whether 
in  thoughts  or  in  things,  as  following  from  the  supposed 
necessity  of  such  singleness  or  particularity,  is. quite  ground- 


Not  pela- 
tiona  of  re- 
semblance 
only,  but 
those  of 
quantity 
also, 

treated  b J 
Hume  as 
feelings. 


225.  Hitherto  the  idea  of  relation  which  we  have  had 
specially  in  view  has  been  that  of  relation  in  the  way  of 
resemblance,  and  the  propositions  have  been  such  as  repre- 
sent the  most  obvious  *  facts  of  observation ' — facts  about 
this  or  that  *  body,'  man  or  horse  or  ball.  We  have  seen 
that  these  already  suppose  the  thought  of  an  object  qualified, 
not  transitory  as  are  feelings,  but  one  to  which  feelings  are 
referred  on  tiieir  occurrence  as  resemblances  or  differences 
between  it  and  other  objects ;  but  that  by  an  equivocation, 
which  unexamined  phraseology  covers,  between  the  thought 
of  such  an  object  and  feeling  proper — as  if  becaase  we  talk 
of  seeing  a  man,  therefore  a  man  were  a  feeling  of  colour 
— Hume  is  able  to  represent  them  as  mere  data  of  sense, 
and  thus  to  ignore  the  difference  between  related  feelings 
and  ideas  of  relation.  Thus  the  first  step  has  been  taken 
towards  transferring  to  the  sensitive  subject,  as  merely  sensi- 
tive, the  power  of  thought  and  significant  speech.  The 
next  is  to  transfer  to  it  ideas  of  those  other  relations  ^  which 
Hume  classifies  as  ^  relations  of  time  and  place,  proportion 
in  quantity  or  number,  degrees  in  any  quality '  (p.  368).  This 
done,  it  is  sufficiently  equipped  for  achieving  its  deliverance 
from  metaphysics.      An  animal,    capable   of   experiments 


I  The  course  which  our  examination 
of  Hume  should  take  was  marked  out, 
it  will  be  remembered,  by  his  enumera- 
tion of  the  *  natural*  relations  that  re- 
gulate the  association  of  ideas.  It 
might  seem  a  departure  from  this 
course  to  proceed,  as  in  the  text,  from 
the  relation  of  resemblance  to '  relations 
of  time  and  place,  proportion  in  quan- 
tity or  number,  and  degrees  of  any 
quality,'  since  these  appear  in  Hume's 
•numeration,  not  of  *naturaly  but  of 
*  phiiosnphieal  *  relations.  Such  de- 
parture, however,  is  Vhe  consequence  of 


Hume's  own  procedure.  Whether  he 
considered  these  relations  merely  equi- 
valent to  the  '  natural  ones '  of  resem- 
blance and  contiguity,  he  does  not  ex- 
pressly say ;  but  his  reduction  of  the 
principles  of  mathematics  to  data  of 
sense  implies  that  he  did  so.  The 
treatment  of  degrees  in  quality  and 
proportions  in  quantity  as  sensible  im- 
plies that  the  difference  between  resem- 
blance and  measured  resemblanoa.  be- 
tween contiguity  and  measured  con- 
tiguity, is  ignored. 


HUME'S  LIMITATION  OF  KNOWLEDGE.  187 

eonoeming  matter  of  fact,  and  of  reasoning  concerning 
qnantitj  and  number,  would  certainly  have  some  excuse  for 
throwing  into  the  fire  all  books  which  sought  tb  make  it 
ashamed  of  its  animalily.^ 

226.  In  thus  leaving  mathematics  and  a  limited  sort  of  fle  dnirs 
experimental  physics  (limited  by  the  exclusion  of  all  general  ^^* 
inference  from  the  experiment)  out  of  the  reach  of  his  certainty 
scepticism,  and  in  making  them  his  basis  of  attack  upon  ^i^^^^*^' 
what  he  conceived  to  be  the  more  pretentious  claims  of  the  aune 
knowledge,  Hume  was  again  following  the  course  marked  out  l^^** 
for  him  by  Locke.  It  will  be  remembered  that  Locke,  even 
when  his  '  suspicion '  of  knowledge  is  at  its  strongest,  still 
finds  solid  ground  (a)  in  ^  particular  experiments '  upon 
nature,  expressed  in  singular  propositions  as  opposed  to 
assertions  of  uniyersal  or  necessary  connexion,  and  (b)  in 
mathematical  truths  which  are  at  once  general,  certain,  and 
instructive,  because  ^barely  ideal/  AU  speculative  propositions 
that  do  not  fall  under  one  or  other  of  these  heads  are  either 
*  trifling '  or  merely  *  probable.'  Hume  draws  the  line  between 
certainty  and  probability  at  the  same  point,  nor  in  regard  to 
the  ground  of  certainty  as  to  *  matter  of  fact  or  existence  * 
is  there  any  essential  difference  between  him  and  his  master. 
As  this  ground  is  the  ^  actual  present  sensation '  with  the 
one,  so  it  is  the  '  impression '  with  the  other ;  and  it  is  only 
when  the  proposition  becomes  universal  or  asserts  a  neces- 
sary connection,  that  the  certainty,  thus  given,  is  by  either 
supposed  to  fail.  It  is  true  that  with  Locke  this  authority 
of  the  sensation  is  a  derived  authority,  depending  on  its 
reference  to  a  *  body  now  operating  upon  us,'  while  with 
Hume,  so  far  as  he  is  faithful  to  his  profession  of  discarding 
snch  reference,  it  is  original.  But  with  each  alike  the  fun- 
damental notion  is  that  a  feeling  must  be  ^  true  while  it 
lasisy'  and  that  in  regard  to  real  existence  or  matter  of  fact 
no  other  truth  can  be  known  but  this.  Neither  perceives 
that  a  truth  thus  restricted  is  no  truth  at  all — ^nothing  that 
can  be  stated  even  in  a  singular  proposition ;  that  the  ^  par- 
ticularity in  time,'  on  which  is  supposed  to  depend  the  real 

>   'If  we  take  ID  our  hand  any  Tolume  fact  and  resvUance?    No.    Commit  it 

of  divinitj  or  school-metaphysics,  for  then  to  the  llames,  for  it  can  contain 

instance,  letns  ask,  Jhes  U  contain  any  nothing  but  sophistry  and  illusion.* — 

abstract  reasoning  for  quantity  or  num-  *  Inquiry  concerning  the  Human  Under- 

berl    No.    Does  it  contain  any  expert-  standing,*  at  the  end. 
mmtal  reasoning  concerning  matter  qf 


188 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Iratte 

more  defl- 
nite  as  to 
proba- 
bility, 


and  do6B 
not  admit 
opposition 
of  mathe- 
matical to 
physical 
certainty 
— here 
following 
Berkeley. 


certainty  of  the  simple  feeling,  is  just  that  which  depriyea 
it  of  significance  * — ^because  neither  is  really  £Eiithfal  to  the 
restriction.  Each  allows  himself  to  substitute  fbr  the  mo- 
mentary feeling  an  object  qualified  by  relations,  which  are 
the  exact  opposite  of  momentary  feelings.  *  If  I  myself 
see  a  man  walk  on  the  ice,'  says  Locke  (iv,  xv.  5),  *  it  is 
past  probability,  it  is  knowledge : '  nor  would  Hume,  though 
ready  enough  on  occasion  to  point  out  that  what  is  seen 
must  be  a  colour,  have  any  scruple  in  assuming  that  such  a 
complex  judgment  as  the  above  so-called  ^  sight '  has  the 
certainty  of  a  simple  impression.  It  is  only  in  bringing  to 
bear  upon  thecharacteristicadmission  of  Locke's  FourthBook, 
that  no  general  knowledge  of  nature  can  be  more  than  prob- 
able, a  more  definite  notion  of  what  probability  is,  and  in 
exhibiting  the  latent  inconsistency  of  this  admission  with 
Locke's  own  doctrine  of  ideas  as  effects  of  a  causative  sub- 
stance, that  he  modifies  the  theory  of  physical  certainty 
which  he  inherited.  In  their  treatment  of  mathematical 
truths  on  the  other  hand,  of  propositions  involving  relations 
of  distance,  quantity  and  degree,  a  fundamental  discrep- 
ancy appears  between  the  two  writers.  The  ground  of 
cer^inty,  which  Hume  admits  in  regard  to  propositions  of 
this  order,  must  be  examined  before  we  can  appreciate  his 
theory  of  probability  as  it  affects  the  relations  of  cause  and 
substance. 

227.  It  has  been  shown*  that  Locke's  opposition  of 
mathematical  to  physical  certainty,  with  his  ascription  to 
the  former  of  instructive  generality  on  the  ground  of  its  bare 
ideality — ^the  ^  ideal '  in  this  regard  being  opposed  to  what  is 
found  in  sensation — strikes  at  the  very  root  of  his  system. 
It  implies  that  thought  can  originate,  and  that  what  it  origi- 
nates is  in  some  sort  real — ^nay,  as  being  nothing  else  than 
the  ^  primary  qualities  of  matter,'  is  the  source  of  all  other 
reality.  Here  was  an  alien  element  which  ^  empiricism '  could 
not  assimilate  without  changing  its  character.  Carrying 
such  a  conception  along  with  it,  it  was  already  charged  with 
an  influence  which  must  ultimately  work  its  complete  trans- 
mutation by  compelling,  not  the  iidmission  of  an  ideal  world 
of  guess  and  aspiration  alongside  of  the  empirical,  but  the 
recognition  of  the  empirical  as  itself  ideal.    The  time  for 


>  See  above,  paragraphs  46  and  97.        '  See  abr  ve,  paragraphs  1 17  and  12& 


•    CRITICISM  OF  *  PRIMARY  QUALITIES.'  189 

UuB  transmntation,  however,  was  not  yet.  Berkeley,  in' 
over-hasty  zeal  for  God,  had  missed  that  only  true  way  of 
finding  God  in  the  world  which  lies  in  the  discovery  that 
the  world  is  Thought.  Having  taken  fright  at  the  *  mathe- 
matical Atheism,*  which  seemed  to  grow  out  of  the  current 
doctrines  about  primary  qualities  of  matter,  instead  of 
applying  Locke's  own  admissions  to  show  that  these  were 
intelligible  and  merely  intelligible,  he  fancied  that  he  had 
won  the  battle  for  Theism  by  making  out  that  they  were 
merely  feelings  or  sequences  of  feelings.  From  him  Hume 
got  the  text  for  all  he  had  to  say  against  the  metaphysical 
mathematicians ;  but,  for  the  reason  that  Hume  applied  it 
with  no  theological  interest,  its  true  import  becomes  more 
apparent  with  him  than  with  Berkeley. 

228.  His  account  of  mathematical  truths,  as  contained  in  His  crHS* 
Part  II.  of  the  First  Book  of  the  *  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,'  «»°J  of 
cannot  be  fairly  read  except  in  connection  with  the  chapters  trine  of 
in  Part  iv.  on  *  Scepticism  with  regard  to  the  Senses,'  and  on  primary 
*  the  Modem  Philosophy.'     The  latter  chapter  is  expressly  a  ^       **' 
polemic  against  Locke's  doctrine  of  primary  qualities,  and  its 

drift  is  to  reverse  the  relations  which  Locke  had  asserted 
between  them  and  sensations,  making  the  primary  qualities 
depend  on  sensations,  instead  of  sensations  on  the  primary 
qualities.  Li  Locke  himself  we  have  found  that  two  incon- 
sistent views  on  the  subject  perpetually  cross  each  other.^ 
According  to  one,  momentary  sensation  is  the  sole  conveyance 
to  us  of  reality ;  according  to  the  other,  the  real  is  constituted 
by  qualities  of  bodies  which  not  only  *  are  in  them  whether 
we  perceive  them  or  not,'  but  which  only  complex  ideas  of 
relation  can  represent.  The  unconscious  device  which  covered 
this  inconsistency  lay,  we  found,*  in  the  conversion  of  the 
mere  feeling  of  touch  into  the  touch  of  a  body^  and  thus  into 
an  experience  of  solidity.  By  this  conversion,  since  solidity 
according  to  Locke's  account  carries  with  it  all  the  primary 
qualities,  these  too  become  data  of  sensation,  while  yet,  by 
the  retention  of  the  opposition  between  them  and  ideas,  the 
advantage  is  gained  of  apparently  avoiding  that  identification 
of  what  is  real  with  simple  feeling,  which  science  and  common 
sense  alike  repel. 

229.  Hume  makes  a  show  of  getting  rid  of  this  see-saw.  It  will  noi 

■  See  above,  paragraph  99  and  foUowing.  '  See  above,  paragraph  lOU 


190  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

do  to        '  Instead  of  assuming  at  onoe  the  reality  of  sensation  on  the 
JPJI^  ^    strength  of  its  relation  to  the  primary  qualities  and  the  reality 
our  feel-     of  these  On  the  strength  of  their  being  given  in  tactual  experi- 
ing,  when    enco,  he  pronounces  sensations  alone  the  real,  to  which  the 
ing^can^ '    primary  qualities  must  be  reduced,  if  they  are  not  to  disappear 
pv«ide«     altogeiher.    *  If  colours,  sounds,  tastes,  and  smells  be  merely 
^'     perceptions,  nothing  we  can  conceive  is  possessed  of  a  real, 
continued,  and  independent  existence '  (513).    That  they  are 
perceptions  is  of  course  undoubted.  The  question  is,  whether 
there  is  a  real  something  beside  and  beyond  them,  con* 
trast  with  which  is  implied  in  speaking  of  them  as  '  merely 
perceptions.^      The  supposed  qualities  of  such  a  real  are 
^  motion,  extension,  and  solidity '  (Ibid.)-    To  modes  of  these 
the  other  primary  qualities  enumerated  by  Locke  are  redu- 
cible ;   and  of  these  again  motion  and  extension,  according 
to  Locke's  account  no  less  than  Hume's  own,  presuppose 
solidity.     What  then  do  we  assert  of  the  real,  in  contrast 
with  which  we  talk  of  perception,  as  mere  perception,  when 
we  say  that  it  is  solid  P  *  In  order  to  form  an  idea  of  solidity 
we  must  conceive  two  bodies  pressing  on  each  other  mthout 

any  penetration Now,  what  idea  do  we  form 

of  these  bodies  P To  say  that  we  conceive  them 

as  solid  is  to  run  on  ad  infinitum.  To  affirm  that  we  paint 
them  out  to  ourselves  as  extended,  either  resolves  them  all 
into  a  false  idea  or  returns  in  a  circle  ;  extension  must  neces* 
sarily  be  conceived  either  as  coloured,  which  is  a  false  idea,* 
or  as  solid,  which  brings  us  back  to  the  first  question.'  Of 
solidity,  then,  the  ultimate  determination  of  the  supposed 
real,  there  is  *  no  idea  to  be  formed  *  apart  from  those  per- 
ceptions to  which,  as  independent  of  our  senses,  it  is  opposed. 
'After  exclusion  of  colours,  sounds,  heat  and  cold  from  the 
rank  of  external  existences,  there  remains  nothing  which  can 
afford  us  a  just  and  consistent  idea  of  body.' 
Locke's  230.  Our  examination  of  Locke  has  shown  us  how  it  is 

*body/^  that  his  interpretation  of  ideas  by  reference  to  body  is  fairly 
*  Bolidity/  open  to  this  attack.  It  is  so  because,  in  thus  interpreting 
nouch  *  them,  he  did  not  know  what  he  was  really  about.  He  thought 
fairly  ex-  he  was  explaining  ideas  of  sense  according  to  the  only  method 
P^^         of  explanation  which  he  recognises — the  method  of  resolving 

>  *  A  false  idea,*  that  is,  according  to      a  secondary  (quality,  not  resembling  the 
the  doctrine  that  extension  is  a  primary      quality  as  it  is  in  the  thing, 
quality,  while  colour  is  only  an  idea  of 


WHAT  BECOMES  OF  'BODY'?  191 

eomplez  into  simple  ideas,  and  of  ^  sending  a  man  to  his 
senses'  for  a  knowledge  of  the  simple.  In  feet,  however, 
when  he  explained  ideas  of  sense  as  derived  from  the  qualities 
of  body,  he  was  explaining  simple  ideas  by  reference  to  that 
which,  according  to  his  own  showing,  is  a  complex  idea.  To 
say  that,  as  Locke  understood  the  derivation  in  question,  the 
primary  qualities  are  an  Satiov  yeusaetDt  to  the  ideas  of  secon- 
dary qualities,  but  not  an  amov  yvdaetas — that  without  our 
having  ideas  of  them  they  cause  those  ideas  of  sense  from 
which  afterwards  our  ideas  of  the  primary  qualities  are  formed 
— is  to  suppose  an  order  of  reality  other  than  the  order  of  our 
sensitive  experience,  and  thus  to  contradict  Locke's  funda- 
mental doctrine  that  the  genesis  of  ideas  is  to  be  found  by 
observing  their  succession  in  ^  our  own  breasts.'  It  is  not 
thus  that  Locke  himself  escapes  the  difficulty.  As  we  have 
seen,  he  supposes  om'  ideas  of  sense  to  be  from  the  beginning 
ideas  of  the  qualities  of  bodies,  and  virtually  justifies  the  suppo- 
sition by  sending  the  reader  to  his  sense  of  touch  for  that  idea 
of  solidity  in  which,  as  he  defines  it,  all  the  primary  qualities 
are  involved.  That  the  sense  in  question  does  not  really  yield 
the  idea  is  what  Hume  points  out  when  he  says  that,  ^though 
bodien  are  felt  by  means  of  their  solidity,  yet  the  feeling  is 
quite  a  different  thing  from  the  solidity,  nor  have  they  the 
least  resemblance  to  each  other.'  In  other  words,  having 
come  to  suppose  that  there  are  solid  bodies,  we  explain  our 
feeling  as  due  to  their  solidity;  but  we  may  not  at  once 
interpret  feeling  as  the  result  of  solidity,  and  treat  solidity 
as  itself  a  feeling.  It  was  by  allowing  himself  so  to  treat  it 
that  Locke  disguised  frx>m  himself  the  objection  to  his  inter- 
pretation of  feeling.  Hume  tears  off  the  disguise,  and  in 
effect  gives  him  the  choice  of  being  convicted  either  of 
reasoning  in  a  circle  or  of  explaining  the  simple  idea  by 
reference  to  the  complex.  The  solidity,  which  is  to  explain 
feeling,  can  itself  only  be  explained  by  reference  to  body.  If 
body  is  only  a  complex  of  ideas  of  sense,  in  referring  tactual 
feeling  to  it  we  are  explaining  a  simple  idea  by  reference  to 
a  compound  one.  If  it  is  not,  how  is  it  to  be  defined  except 
in  the  '  circular '  way,  which  Locke  in  fact  adopts  when  he 
makes  body  a  ^  texture  of  solid  parts '  and  solidity  a  relation 
of  bodies?* 

■  See  above,  paragmph  101. 


192 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Tnie 
rationale 
of  Locke's 
doetrine. 


With 
Hume 
•body' 
logicallj 
disap- 
pears, 


281.  This  ^vicious  circle'  was  nothing  of  which  Locke 
need  have  been  ashamed,  if  only  he  had  understood  and 
avowed  its  necessity.  Body  is  to  solidity  and  to  the  primary 
qualities  in  general  simply  as  a  snbstiuice  to  the  relations 
that  determine  it;  and  the  *  circle'  in  question  merely  repre- 
sents the  logical  impossibility  of  defining  a  substance  except 
by  relations,  and  of  defining  these  relations  without  presup- 
posing a  substance.  It  was  only  Locke's  confusion  of  the 
order  of  logical  correlation  with  the  sequence  of  feelings  in 
time,  that  laid  him  open  to  the  charge  of  making  body  and 
the  ideas  of  primary  qualities,  and  again  the  latter  ideas  and 
those  of  secondary  qualities,  at  once  precede  and  follow  each 
other.  To  avoid  this  confusion  by  recognising  the  logical 
order — the  order  of  intellectual  *  fictions' — as  that  apart 
from  which  the  sequence  of  feelings  would  be  no  order  of 
knowable  reality  at  all,  would  be  of  course  impossible  for  one 
who  took  Locke's  antithesis  of  thought  and  fact  for  granted. 
The  time  for  that  was  not  yet.  A  way  of  escape  had  first 
to  be  sought  in  a  more  strict  adherence  to  Locke's  identifi- 
cation of  the  sequence  of  feelings  with  the  order  of  reality. 
Hence  Hume's  attempt,  reversing  Locke's  derivation  of 
ideas  of  sense  from  primary  qualities  of  body,  to  derive  what 
with  Locke  had  been  primary  qualities,  as  compound  im- 
pressions of  sense,  from  simple  impressions  and  to  reduce  body 
itself  to  a  name  not  for  any  ^  just  and  consistent  idea,'  but 
for  a  '  propensity  to  feign,'  the  gradual  product  of  custom  and 
imagination.  The  question  by  which  the  value  of  such  deri- 
vation and  reduction  is  to  be  tried  is  our  old  one,  whether  it 
is  not  a  tacit  conversion  of  the  supposed  original  impressions 
into  qualities  of  body  that  alone  makes  them  seem  to  yield 
the  result  required  of  them.  If  the  Fourth  Book  of  the 
^  Treatise  on  Human  Nature,'  with  its  elimination  of  the 
idea  of  body,  had  come  before  the  second,  would  not  the 
plausibility  of  the  account  of  mathematical  ideas  contained 
in  the  latter  have  disappeared  ?  And  conversely,  if  these 
ideas  had  been  reduced  to  that  which  upon  elimination  of 
the  idea  of  body  they  properly  become,  would  not  that  *  pro- 
pensity to  feign,'  which  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  excluded 
idea,  be  itself  unaccountable  9 

232.  '  After  exclusion  of  colours,  sounds,  heat  and  cold, 
from  the  rank  of  external  existences,  there  remains  nothing 
which  can  afford  us  a  just  and  consistent  idea  of  body.' 


DERIVATION  OF  IDEA  OF  SPACE.  188 

Now^  no  one  can  ^exclude  them  from  the  rank  of  external  What 
exifltences *  more  decisively  than  Hume.  They  are  impres-  ^^^ 
gions,  and  ^  all  impressions  are  internal  and  perishing  ex- 
istences, and  appear  as  such.'  Nor  does  he  shirk  the  conse- 
quence, that  we  have  no  'just  and  consistent  idea  of  body.' 
It  is  true  that  we  cannot  avoid  a  *  belief  in  its  existence  '— 
a  belief  which  according  to  Hume  consists  in  the  supposition 
of  *  a  continued  existence  of  objects  when  they  no  longer 
appear  to  the  senses,  and  of  their  existence  as  distinct  from 
the  mind  and  perceptions ; '  in  other  words,  as  '  external  to 
and  independent  of  us.'  This  belief,  however,  as  he  shows, 
is  not  given  by  the  senses.  That  we  shoidd  feel  the  existence 
of  an  object  to  be  continued  when  we  no  longer  feel  it,  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms ;  nor  is  it  less  so,  that  we  should  feel 
it  to  be  distinct  from  the  feeling.  We  cannot,  then,  have  an 
impression  of  body;  and,  since  we  cannot  have  an  idea  which 
does  not  correspond  to  an  impression  or  collection  of  impres- 
sions, it  follows  that  we  can  have  no  idea  of  it.  How  the '  belief 
in  its  existence '  is  accounted  for  by  Hume  in  the  absence  of 
any  idea  of  it,  is  a  question  to  be  considered  later.^  Our 
present  concern  is  to  know  whether  the  idea  of  extension 
can  hold  its  ground  when  the  idea  of  body  is  excluded.  Can  Space 

238.  *  The  first  notion  of  space  and  extension,'  he  says,  b^^Iv? 
'is  derived  solely  from  the  senses  of  sight  and  feeling:  nor  Hume  de- 
ls there  anything  but  what  is  coloured  or  tangible  that  has  "^^?J  ^ 
parts  disposed  after  such  a  manner  as  to  convey  the  idea.'  sight  and 
Now,  there  may  be  a  meaning  of  *  derivation,'  according  to  ^^^^' 
which  no  one  would  care  to  dispute  the  first  clause  of  this 
sentence.     Those  who  hold  that  really ^  i.e.  for  a  conadousness 
to  which  the  distmctum  between  real  and  uwreaZ  is  possible^ 
there  is   no   feeling   except    such    as    is    determined    by 
thought,  are  yet  far  from  holding  that  the  determination  is 
arbitrary ;  that  any  and  every  feeling  is  potentially  any  and 
every  conception.     Of  the  feelings  to  which  the  visual  and 
tactual  nerves  are  organic,  as  they  would  be  for  a  merely  feel- 
ing consciousness,  nothing,  they  hold,  can  be  said ;  in  that 
sense  they  are  an  atrupop;  but  for  the  thinking  conscious- 
ness, or  (which  is  the  same)  as  they  really  are,  these  feelings 
do,  while  those  to  which  other  nerves  are  organic  do  not, 
form  the  specific  possibility  of  the  conception  of  space,     Ac- 

*  See  below,  paragraph  303,  and  foil. 
VOL.  I.  O 


194  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

cording  to  this  meaning  of  the  words,  all  mnst  admit  that 
*  the  first  notion  of  space  and  extension  is  derived  from  the 
senses  of  sight  and  feeling;'  though  it. does  not  foUow  that 
a  repeated  or  continued  activity  of  either  sense  is  necessary 
to  the  continued  presence  of  the  notion.  With  Hnme,  how- 
ever, the  derivation  spoken  of  must  mean  that  the  notion  of 
space  is,  to  begin  with,  simply  a  visual  or  tactual  feeling, 
and  that  such  it  remains,  though  with  indefinite  abatement 
and  revival  in  the  liveliness  of  the  feeling,  according  to  the 
amount  of  which  it  is  called  *  impression  *  or  *  idea.'  If  we 
supposed  him  to  mean,  not  that  the  notion  of  space  was 
either  a  visual  or  tactual  feeling  indifferently,  but  that  it  was 
Sjgnifi-  a  compound  result  of  both,'  we  should  merely  have  to  meet  a 
htm  of^  further  difficulty  as  to  the  possibility  of  such  composition  of 
such  deri-  feelings  when  tiieir  inward  synthesis  in  a  soul,  and  the  out- 
Tauon.  ^ard  in  a  body,  have  been  alike  excluded.  In  the  next  clause 
of  the  sentence,  however,  we  find  that  for  visual  and  tactual 
feelings  there  are  quietly  substituted  *  coloured  and  tangible 
objects,  having  parts  so  disposed  as  to  convey  the  idea  of 
extension.'  It  is  in  the  light  of  this  latter  clause  that  the 
uncritical  reader  interprets  the  former.  He  reads  back  the 
plausibility  of  the  one  into  the  other,  and,  having  done  so, 
finds  the  whole  plausible.  Now  this  plausibility  of  the  latter 
clause  arises  from  its  implying  a  three-fold  distinction — a 
distinction  of  colour  or  tangibility  on  the  one  side  from  tho 
disposition  of  the  parts  on  the  other;  a  distinction  of  the 
colour,  tangibility  and  disposition  of  parts  alike  from  an 
object  to  which  they  belong ;  and  a  distinction  of  this  object 
from  the  idea  that  it  conveys.  In  other  words,  it  supposes 
a  negative  answer  to  the  three  following  questions : — Is  the 
idea  of  extension  the  same  as  that  of  colour  or  tangibility? 
Is  it  possible  without  reference  to  something  other  than  a 
possible  impression?  Is  the  idea  of  extension  itself  ex- 
tended? Yet  to  the  two  latter  questions,  according  to 
Hume's  express  statements,  the  answer  must  be  affirmative ; 
nor  can  he  avoid  the  affirmative  answer  to  the  first,  to  which 
It  means,  he  would  properly  be  brought,  except  by  equivocation, 
ij^ff^ct,  284.   The  pieces  justijlcatives  for  this  assertion  are  not 

and^i^e'  f^r  to  seek.     Some  of  them  have  been  adduced  already.    The 
are  the       idea  of  space,  like  every  other  idea,  must  be  a  *  copy  of  an 


same, 


*  It  is  Qot  really  in  this    sense  that      Hume  is  a  '  compound'  one,  as  will  ap- 
the  impression   of  space    according  to      pear  below. 


SPACE  A  perception:  196 

impression.''  To  speak  of  a  feeling  in  its  fainter  stage  as  an 
'  image '  of  what  it  was  in  its  livelier  stage  may,  indeed,  seem 
a  curious  nse  of  terms;  but  in  this  sense  onlj,  according  to 
Hume's  strict  doctrine,  can  the  idea  of  space  be  spoken  of 
as  an  'image'  of  anything  at  all.  The  impression  from 
which  it  is  derived,  i.e,  the  feeling  at  its  liveliest^  cannot 
properly  be  so  spoken  of,  for  '  no  impression  is  presented  by 
the  senses  as  the  image  of  anything  distinct^  or  external,  or 
independent.' '  If  no  impression  is  so  presented,  neither  can 
any  idea^  which  copies  the  impression,  be  so.  It  can  involve  no 
reference  to  anything  which  does  not  come  and  go  with  the 
impression.  Accordingly  no  distinction  is  possible  between 
space  on  the  one  hand,  and  either  the  impression  or  idea  of 
it  on  the  other.  All  impressions  and  ideas  that  can  be  said  andthst 
to  be  of  extension  must  be  themselves  extended ;  and  con-  may'i^ 
Tersely,  as  Hume  puts  it,  *  all  the  qualities  of  extension  are  extended. 
qualities  of  a  perception.'  It  should  follow  that  space  is 
either  a  colour  or  feeling  of  touch.  In  the  terms  which 
Hume  himself  uses  with  reference  to  '  substance,' '  if  it  be 
perceived  by  the  eyes,  it  must  be  colour ;  if  by  the  ears,  a 
sound;  and  so  on,  of  the  other  senses.'  As  he  expressly 
tells  us  that  it  is  '  perceived  by  the  eyes,'  the  conclusion  is 
inevitable. 

235.  Hume  does  not  attempt  to  reject  the  conclusion  di-  The  parts 
rectly.    He  had  too  much  eye  to  the  appearance  of  con-  °p/p^ 
sistency  for  that.     But,  in  professing  to  admit  it,  he  wholly  of  a  per- 
alters  its  significance.     The  passage  in  question  must  be  ^^P^*^'^- 
quoted  at  length.     *  The  table,  which  just  now  appears  to 
me,  is  only  a  perception,  and  all  its  qualities  are  qualities  of  a 
perception.      Now,  the  most  obvious  of  all  its  qualities  is 
extension.     The  perception  consists  of  parts.     These  parts 
are  so  situated  as  to  afford  us  the  notion  of  distance  and 
contiguity,  of  length,  breadth,  and  thickness.     The  termina- 
tion of  i^ese  three  dimensions  is  what  we  call  figure.    The 
figure  is  moveable,  separable,  and  divisible.     Mobility  and 
separability  are  the  distinguishing  properties  of  extended 
objects.     And,  to  cut  short  all  disputes,  the  very  idea  of 
extension  is  copied  from  nothing  but  an  impression,  and  con- 
sequently must  perfectly  agree  to  it.     To  say  the  idea  of  ex- 
tension agrees  to  anything  is  to  say  it  is  extended.*    Thus 
'  there  are  impressions  and  ideas  that  are  really  extended.'* 

»  P.  840.  •  P.  479.  •  p.  628. 

o  2 


■ire. 


196  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

236.  In  order  to  a  proper  appreciation  of  this  passage  it  is 
essential  to  bear  in  mind  that  Hume,  so  &r  as  the  nsages  of 
language  would  allow  him,  ignores  all  such  differences  in 
modes  of  consciousness  as  the  Germans  indicate  bj  the  dis- 
tinction between  *  Empfindung '  and  *  Vorstellung,*  and  by 
that  between  *  Anschauung '  and  ^  Begriff ; '  or,  more  properly. 
Yet  the  that  he  expressly  merges  them  in  a  mode  of  consciousness 
P*^  ^^  for  which,  according  to  the  most  consistent  account  that  can 
oo-cxjftent  be  gathered  from  him,  the  most  natural  fcerm  would  be 
Doteoceee-  *  feeling.**  It  is  true  that  Hume  himself,  admitting  a  dis- 
tinction in  the  degree  of  vivacity  with  which  this  conscious- 
ness is  at  different  times  presented,  inclines  to  restrict  the 
term  '  feeling '  to  its  more  vivacious  stage,  aud  to  use  '  per- 
ception '  as  the  more  general  term,  applicable  whatever  the 
degree  of  vivacity  may  be.*  We  must  not  allow  him,  how- 
ever, in  using  this  term  to  gain  the  advantage  of  a  meaning 
which  popular  theory  does,  but  his  does  not^  attach  to  it. 
*  Perception  *  vrith  him  covers  *  idea  *  as  well  as  *  impression ; ' 
but  nothing  can  be  said  of  idea  that  cannot  be  said  of  impres- 
sion, save  that  it  is  less  lively,  nor  of  impression  that  cannot 
be  said  of  idea,  save  that  it  is  more  so.  It  is  this  explicit 
reduction  of  all  consciousness  virtually,  if  not  in  name,  to 
feeling  that  brings  to  the  surface  the  difficulties  latent  in 
Locke's  '  idealism.'  These  we  have  already  traced  at  large ; 
but  they  may  be  summed  up  in  the  question,  How  can  feelings, 
as  *  particular  in  time '  or  (which  is  the  same)  in  '  perpetual 
flux,'  constitute  or  represent  a  world  of  permanent  rdations  ?• 
The  difficulty  becomes  more  obvious,  though  not  more  real, 
when  the  relations  in  question  are  not  merely  themselves 
permanent,  like  those  between  natural  phenomena,  but  are 
'  relations  between  permanent  parts,'  like  those  of  space.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  its  doctrine  about  geometry  has  always 
been  found  the  most  easily  assailable  point  of  the  *  sensa- 
tional '  philosophy.  Locke  distinguishes  the  ideas  of  space 
and  of  duration  as  got,  the  one  *  from  the  permanent  parts  of 
space,'  the  other  *  from  the  fleeting  and  perpetually  perishing 
parts  of  succession.'*  He  afterwards  prefers  the  term  *  expan- 

*  As  implying  no  distinction  from,  or  ceive.'    F.  371. 

reference  to,  a  thing  causing  and  a  sub-  *  When  I  shut  mj  eyes  and  think  of 

ject  experiencing  it.     See  above,  para-  my  chamber,  the  ideas  I  form  are  exact 

graphs  196  and  208,  and  the  passages  representations  of  the   impressions    I 

there  referred  to.  felt:    P.  812. 

■  *  To  hate,  to  love,  to  think,  to  feel,  »  See  above,  paragraphs  172  &  176. 

to  see;  all  this  is  nothing  but  to  per*  *  Essay  n.  chap.  xiv.  sec.  1. 


MEANING  OF  'PERCEPTION.*  107 

Am '  to  space,  as  the  opposite  of  dnration,  because  it  brings 
out  more  clearly  the  distinction  of  a  relation  between  perma- 
nent parts  from  that  between  '  fleeting  successive  parts  which 
never  exist  together.*  How,  then,  can  a  consciousness  con- 
sisting simply  of  ^  fleeting  successive  parts '  either  be  or 
represent  that  of  which  the  differentia  is  that  its  parts  are 
permanent  and  co-exist  9 

237.  If  this  crux  had  been  fairly  faced  by  Hume,  he  must 
have  seen  that  the  only  way  in  which  he  could  consistently 
deal  with  it  was  by  radically  altering,  with  whatever  conse- 
quence to  the  sciences,  Locke's  account  of  space.  As  it  was, 
he  did  not  face  it,  but— whether  intentionally  or  only  in  effect 

— disguised  it  by  availing  himself  of  the  received  usages  of  Hume  can- 
lang^uage,  which  roughly  represent  a  theory  the  exact  oppo-  g^^^^* 
site  of  his  own,  to  cover  the  incompatibility  between  the  *  percept- 
established  view  of  the  nature  of  space,  and  his  own  reduction  ^  °t^^^^*** 
of  it  to  feeling.     A  very  little  examination  of  the  passage,  false  t«> 
quoted  at  large  above,  will  show  that  while  in  it  a  profession  ^^^j^^jof 
is  made  of  identifying  extension  and  a  certain  sort  of  per-  perception; 
ception  with  each  other,  its  effect  is  not  really  to  reduce  ex- 
tension to  such  a  perception  as  Hume  elsewhere  explains  all 
perceptions  to  be,  but  to  transfer  the  recognised  properties  of 
extension  which  with  such  reduction  would  disappear,  to  some- 
thing which  for  the  time  he  chooses  to  reckon  a  perception, 
but  which  he  can  only  so  reckon  at  the  cost  of  contradicting 
his  whole  method  of  dealing  with  the  ideas  of  Gk)d,  the  soul, 
and  the  world.    The  passage,  in  fact,  is  merely  one  sample 
of  the  continued  shuffle  by  which  Hume  on  the  one  hand 
ascribes  to  feeling  that  intelligible  content  which  it  only  de- 
rives from  relation  to  objects  of  thought,  and  on  the  other 
disposes  of  these  objects  because  they  are  not  feelings. 

238.  ^  The  table,  which  just  now  appears  to  me,  is  only  a  as  appean 
perception,  and  all  its  qualities  are  qualities  of  a  perception.  If^enQ^^'^ 
Now,  the  most  obvious  of  all  its  qualities  is  extension.     The  for  *  per- 
perception  consists  of  parts.     These  parts  are  so  situated  as  l^^^^[  ** 
to  afford  us  the  notion  of  distance  and  contiguity,  of  length,  sages  in 
breadth,  and  thickness,*  &c.,  &c.    K,  now,  throughout  this  q^^e^tion. 
statement  (as  according  to  Hume's  doctrine  we  are  entitled 

to  do)  we  write /eeZingr  for  *  perception  *  and  *  notion,*  it  will 
appear  that  this  table  is  a  feeling,  which  has  another  feeling, 
called  extension,  as  one  of  its  qualities ;  and  that  this  latter 
feeling  consists  of  parts.    These,  in  turn,  must  be  themselves 


106 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


To  make 
ftezise  of 
them,  we 
must  take 
perception 
to  mean 
perceived 
tiling, 


feelings,  since  the  parts  of  which  a  {>erception  consists  mnst  be 
themselves  perceived,  and,  being  perceived,  must,  according  to 
Hume,  be  themselves  perceptions  which  s  feelings.  These 
feelings,  again,  afford  ns  other  feelings  of  certain  relations 
— distance  and  contiguity,  &c. — ^feelings  which,  as  Hume's 
doctrine  allows  of  no  distinction  between  the  feeling  and  that 
of  which  it  is  the  feeling,  must  be  themselves  relations.  Thus 
it  would  seem  that  a  feeling  may  have  another  feeling  as  one 
of  its  qualities ;  that  the  feeling,  which  is  thus  a  quality,  has 
other  feelings  as  its  co-existent  parts ;  and  that  the  feelings 
which  are  parts  ^  afford  us '  other  feelings  which  are  rela- 
tions.   Is  that  sense  or  nonsense? 

239.  To  this  a  follower  of  Hume,  if  he  could  be  brought 
to  admit  the  legitimacy  of  depriving  his  master  of  the  benefit 
of  synonyms,  might  probably  reply,  that  the  apparent  non- 
sense only  arises  from  our  being  unaccustomed  to  such  use 
of  the  term  '  feeling ;'  tiiat  the  table  is  a  ^  bundle  of  feeUngs,' 
actual  and  possible,  of  which  the  actual  one  of  sight  suggests 
a  lively  expectation,  easily  confused  with  the  presence,  of  the 
others  belonging  to  the  other  senses ;  tiiat  any  one  of  these 
may  be  considered  a  quality  of  the  total  impression  formed 
by  all ;  that  the  feeling  thus  considered,  if  it  happens  to  be 
visual,  may  not  improperly  be  said  to  consist  of  other  feelings, 
as  a  whole  consists  of  parts,  since  it  is  the  result  of  impres- 
sions on  different  parts  of  tiie  retina,  and  from  a  different 
point  of  view  even  itself  to  be  the  relation  between  the  parts, 
just  as  naturally  as  a  mutual  feeling  of  friendship  may  be  said 
either  to  consist  of  the  loves  of  the  two  parties  to  the  friend- 
ship, or  to  constitute  the  relation  between  them.  Such 
language  represents  those  modem  adaptations  of  Hume,  which 
retain  Ms  identification  of  the  real  with  the  felt  but  ignore 
his  restrictions  on  the  felt.  Undoubtedly,  if  Hume  allowed 
us  to  drop  the  distinction  between  feeling  as  it  might  be  for 
a  merely  feeling  consciousness,  and  feeling  as  it  is  for  a 
thinking  consciousness,  the  objection  to  his  speaking  of  feel- 
ing in  those  terms,  in  which  it  must  be  spoken  of  if  extension 
is  to  be  a  feeling,  would  disappear;  but  so,  likewise,  would 
the  objection  to  speaking  of  thought  as  constitutive  of  reality. 
To  appreciate  his  view  we  must  take  feeling  not  as  we  really 
know  it — for  we  cannot  know  it  except  under  those  conditions 
of  self-consciousness,  the  logical  categories,  which  in  his 
attempt  to  get  at  feeling,  pure  and  simple,  Hume  is  consistent 


ISO  OBJECT  OTHER  THAN  THE  PERCEPTION.        19» 

eaongh  to  exdade — ^but  as  it  becomes  upon  exclusion  of  all 
determination  by  objects  which  Hume  reckons  fictitious. 
What  it  would  thus  become  positively  we  of  course  cannot 
say,  for  of  the  unknowable  nothing  can  be  said ;  but  we  can 
decide  negatively  what  it  cannot  be.  Can  that  in  any  case  be 
said  of  it,  which  must  be  said  of  it  if  a  feeling  may  be  ex- 
tended, and  if  extension  is  a  feeling  9  Can  it  be  such  a  quality 
of  an  object,  so  consisting  of  parts,  and  such  a  relation,  as  we 
have  found  that  Hume  takes  it  to  be  in  his  account  of  the 
perception  of  this  table  9 

240.  After  having  taken  leave  throughout  the  earlier  which  it 
part  of  the  *  Treatise  on  Human  Nature  *  to  speak  in  the  ^n'U 
ordinary  way  of  objects  and  their  qualities — and  otherwise  the  result 
of  course  he  could  not  have  spoken  at  all— in  the  fourth  ?fi^^; 
book  he  seems  for  the  first  time  to  become  aware  that  his 
doctrine  did  not  authorise  such  language.  To  perceive 
qualities  of  an  object  is  to  be  conscious  of  relation  between 
a  subject  and  object,  of  which  neither  perishes  with  the 
moment  of  perception.  Such  consciousness  is  self-con- 
sciousness, and  cannot  be  reduced  to  any  natural  observ 
able  event,  since  it  is  consciousness  of  that  of  which  we 
cannot  say  *Lo,  here,*  or  *Lo,  there/  *  it  is  now  but  was  not 
then,'  or  *it  was  then  but  is  not  now.'  It  is  therefore 
something  which  the  spirit  of  the  Lockeian  philosophy 
cannot  assimilate,  and  which  Hume,  as  the  most  consistent 
exponent  of  that  spirit,  most  consistently  tried  to  get  rid  o£ 
The  subject  as  self,  the  object  as  body,  he  professes  to  reduce 
to  figures  of  speech,  to  be  accounted  for  as  the  result  of  cer- 
tain ^  propensities  to  feign : '  nor  will  he  allow  that  any  im- 
pression or  idea  (and  impressions  and  ideas  with  him,  be 
it  remembered,  exhaust  our  consciousness)  carries  with  it 
a  reference  to  an  object  other  than  itself,  any  more  than  do 
pleasure  or  pain  to  which  ^  in  their  nature '  all  perceptions 
correspond.'  He  cannot,  indeed,  avoid  speaking  of  the  con* 
sciousness  thus  reduced  to  the  level  of  simple  pain  and 
pleasure,  as  being  that  which  in  fact  it  can  only  be  when 
determined  by  relation  to   a  self-conscious  subject,  i.e.  as 

■  '  EreTj  impression,  external  and  in-  *  All  sensations  are  felt  bT  the  mind 

temal,  passions,  affections,  sensations,  inch  as  they  really  aie ;  and,  -vhen  we 

pains,  and  pleasures,  are  originally  on  doubt  whether  they  present  tiwrnselves 

the  same  footing;  and,  whatever  other  as  distinct  objects  or  as  mere  impres- 

difSsrences  we  may  observe  among- them,  sions,  the  difficulty  is  not  concerning 

appear,  aU  of  them,  in  their  true  colours,  their  nature,  but  concerning  their  rela- 

as  impressions  or  perceptions.'    P.  480.  cions  and  situation.'    P.  480. 


200  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

itself  an  object;  but  lie  is  so  fiir  &ithM  in  bis  attempt  to 
ayoid  sncb  determination,  that  be  does  not  reckon  tbe  object 
more  permanent  than  the  impression.  It,  too,  is  a  *  perish- 
ing existence.*  As  the  impression  disappears  with  a  '  turn 
of  the  eye  in  its  socket,'  so  does  the  object,  which  really  is 
the  impression,  and  cannot  appear  other  than  it  is  any  more 
than  a  feeling  can  be  felt  to  be  what  it  is  not* 
If  felt  241.    Such    being    the    only  possible    object,  how  can 

mowthM  ?^^^*^^  ^^  i*  ^  perceived?  We  cannot  here  find  refnge 
feeling,  ui  any  such  propensity  to  feign  as  that  which,  according  to 
how  can  it  Hmne,  leads  ns  to  *  endow  objects  with  a  continued  exist- 
qualitiM?  ence,  distinct  from  our  perceptions.'  If  such  propensities 
can  give  rise  to  impressions  at  all,  it  can  only  be  to  impres- 
sions of  reflection,  and  it  cannot  be  in  virtue  of  them  that 
extension,  an  impression  of  sensation,  is  given  as  a  quality 
of  an  object.  Now  if  there  is  any  meaning  in  the  phrase 
'  qualities  of  an  object,'  it  implies  that  the  qualities  co-exist 
with  each  other  and  the  object.  Feelings,  then,  which  are  felt 
as  qualities  of  another  feeling  must  co-exist  with,  i.e.  (accord- 
ing to  Hume)  be  felt  at  the  same  time  as,  it  and  each  other. 
Thus,  if  an  impression  of  sight  be  the  supposed  object,  no 
feeling  that  occurs  after  this  impression  has  disappeared  can 
be  a  quality  of  it.  Accordingly,  when  Hxmie  speaks  of  ex- 
tension being  seen  as  one  of  the  qualities  of  this  table,  he  is 
only  entitled  to  mean  that  it  is  one  among  several  feelings, 
experienced  at  one  and  the  same  time,  which  together  con- 
stitute the  table.  Whatever  is  not  so  experienced,  whether 
extension  or  anything  else,  can  be  no  quality  of  that  *  per- 
ception.' How  much  of  the  perception,  then,  will  survive? 
Can  any  feelings,  strictly  speaking,  be  cotemporaneous  P 
Those  received  through  different  senses,  as  Hxmie  is  careful 
to  show,  may  be;  e.g.  the  smell,  taste,  and  colour  of  a 
fruit.*  In  regard  to  them,  therefore,  we  may  waive  the 
difficulty,  How  can  feelings  successive  to  each  other  be  yet 
co-existent  qualities  9  but  only  to  find  ourselves  in  another 
as  to  what  the  object  may  be  of  which  the  cotemporaneous 
feelings  are  qualities.     It  cannot,  according  to  Hume,  be 

>  See   above,  pangiaph  208,  vith  Nor  are  they  only  co-exutent  in  general, 

the  paasagies  there  cited.  but  also  ootemporazY  in  their  appear- 

*  'The  taste  and  smell  of  anjfnut  are  ance  in  the  mind.'    P.  621.  (Ccmtrast 

inseparable  from  its  other  qualities  of  p.  370,  where  existence  and  appeamnne 

oolonr  and  tangibility,  and    ....  are  identified.) 
'tis  certain  thoy  are  always  co-existent. 


CAN  A  PERCEFnON  HAVK  QUALITIES  ?  201 

other  tlian  one  or  all  of  the  cotemporaneons  feelings.  Is, 
then,  the  taste  of  an  apple  a  quality  of  its  colour  or  of  its 
smell,  or  of  colour,  smell,  and  taste  put  together  9  It  vnH 
not  help  us  to  speak  of  the  several  feelings  as  qualities  of 
the  *  total  impression;'  for  the  *  total  impression*  either 
merely  means  the  several  feelings  put  together,  or  else 
covertly  implies  just  that  reference  to  an  object  other  than 
these,  which  Hume  expressly  excludes. 

242.  In  fact,  however,  when  he  speaks  of  the  feeling,  which  The  thing 
is  called  extension,  as  a  quality  of  the  feeling,  which  is  called  ^^IJ^*^® 
sight,  of  the  table,  he  has  not  even  the  excuse  that  he  might  before  the 
have  had  if  the  feelings  in  question,  being  of  different  senses,  g«*}ity 
might  be  cotemporary.  « According  to  him  they  are  feelings  of  be. 

the  same  sense.  The  extension  of  the  table  he  took  to  be  a 
datum  of  sight  just  as  properly  as  its  colour ;  yet  he  cannot 
call  it  the  same  as  colour,  but  only  ^  a  quality  of  the  coloured 
object.'  As  the  *  coloured  object,'  however,  apart  from  *  pro- 
pensities to  feign,'  can,  according  to  him,  be  no  other  than 
the  feeling  of  colour,  his  doctrine  can  only  mean  that,  colour 
and  extension  being  feelings  of  the  same  sense,  the  latter  is 
a  quality  of  the  former.  Is  this  any  more  possible  than 
that  red  should  be  a  quality  of  blue,  or  a  sour  taste  of  a 
bitter  one?  Must  not  the  two  feelings  be  successive,  how- 
ever closely  successive,  so  that  the  one  which  is  object  will 
have  disappeared  before  the  other,  which  is  to  be  its  quality, 
will  have  occurred  ?  * 

243.  If  we  look  to  the  detailed  account  which  Hume  gives  Hume 
of  the  relation  between  extension  and  colour,  we  find  that  he  ^^^T 
avoids  the  appearance  of  making  one  feeling  a  quality  of  patting 
another,  by  in  fact  substituting  for  colour  a  superficies  of  *  coloured 
coloured  points,  in  which  it  is  very  easy  to  find  extension  as  ^r^coiwir. 
a  quality  because  it  already  is  extension  as  an  object.     To 

speak  of  extension,  though  a  feeling,  as  made  up  of  parts  is 
just  as  legitimate  or  illegitimate  as  to  speak  of  the  feeling 
of  colour  being  made  up  of  coloured  points.  The  legitimacy 
of  this  once  admitted,  there  remains,  indeed,  a  logical  question 
as  to  how  it  is  that  a  quality  should  be  spoken  of  in  terms 
that  seem  proper  to  a  substance — as  is  done  when  it  is  said 

'  It  shonld  be  needlew  to  point  ont  tion  as  to  its  relation  to  such  feelings 

that  by  taking  extension  to  be  a  quality  will  be  simply  a  repetition  of  that,  put 

cyf  'tangibility'  or  muscular  effort  we  in   the  text,  as  to  its  relation  to  the 

merely  change  the  difficulty.  Theques-  feeling  of  colour. 


302  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

to  cousist  of  parts — and  jet,  again,  should  be  pronounced  a 
relation  of  these  parts ;  but  to  one  who  professed  to  mei^e 
all  logical  distinctions  in  the  indifference  of  simple  feeling, 
such  a  question  could  have  no  recognised  meaning.  It  is, 
then,  upon  the  question  whether,  according  to  Hume's  doc- 
trine of  perception,  the  perception  of  an  object  made  up  of 
coloured  points  may  be  used  interchangeablj  with  the  per- 
ception of  colour,  that  the  consistency  of  his  doctrine  of 
extension  must  finally  be  tried. 

244.  The  detailed  account  is  to  the  following  effect: — 
*  Upon  opening  my  eyes  and  turning  them  to  the  surround- 
ing objects,  I  perceive  many  visible  bodies ;  and  upon  shut- 
ting them  again  and  considering  the*  distance  betwixt  these 
bodies,  I  acquire  the  idea  of  extension.'  From  what  im- 
pression, Hume  proceeds  to  ask,  is  this  idea  derived  9  *  In- 
ternal impressions '  being  excluded,  *  there  remain  nothing 
but  the  senses  which  can  convey  to  us  this  original  impres- 
sion.' .  .  .  ^  The  table  before  me  is  alone  sufficient  by  its 
view  to  give  me  the  idea  of  extension.  This  idea,  then,  is 
borrowed  from  and  represents  some  impression  which  this 
moment  appears  to  the  senses.  But  my  senses  convey  to  me 
only  the  impressions  of  coloured  points,  disposed  in  a  certain 
manner.  .  .  .  We  may  conclude  that  the  idea  of  extension 
is  nothing  but  a  copy  of  these  coloured  points  and  of  the 
manner  of  their  appearance.'  * 
Cana  <di8-  245.  K  the  first  sentence  of  the  above  had  been  found  by 
^r^^^  Hume  in  an  author  whom  he  was  criticising,  he  would 
pointfl  'be  Scarcely  have  been  slow  to  pronounce  it  tautological.  As  it 
an  impMB-  stands,  it  simply  tells  us  that  having  seen  things  extended  we 
consider  their  extension,  and  upon  considering  it  acquire  an 
idea  of  it.  It  is  a  fair  sample  enough  of  those  ^  natural  his* 
tories '  of  the  soul  in  vogue  among  us,  which  by  the  help  of  a 
varied  nomenclature  seem  able  to  explain  a  supposed  later 
state  of  consciousness  as  the  result  of  a  supposed  earlier  one, 
because  the  terms  in  which  the  earlier  is  described  in  effect 
assume  the  later.  It  may  be  said,  however,  that  it  is  only  by 
a  misinterpretation  of  a  carelessly  written  sentence  that 
Hume  can  be  represented  as  deriving  the  idea  of  extension 
from  the  consideration  of  distance ;  that,  as  the  sequel  shows, 
he  regarded  the  ' consideration'  and  the  '  idea '  in  question 

>  Pp.  340  and  341. 


IS  A  'OOMPOUOT)  IMPRESSION'  POSSIBLE?  203 

BB  equiyalent)  and  derived  from  the  same  impression  of 
sense.  It  is  undoubtedly  upon  his  account  of  this  impres* 
sion  that  his  doctrine  of  extension  depends.  It  is  described 
as  '  an  impression  of  coloured  points  disposed  in  a  certain 
manner.'  To  it  the  idea  of  extension  is  related  simply  as  a 
copy ;  which,  we  have  seen,  properly  means  with  Hume,  as 
a  feeling  in  a  less  lively  stage  is  related  to  the  same  feeling 
in  a  more  lively  stage.  It  is  itself,  we  must  note,  the  imprea-^ 
sion  of  extension ;  and  it  is  an  impression  of  sense,  about 
which,  accordingly,  no  further  question  can  properly  be  raised. 
Hume,  indeed,  allows  himself  to  speak  as  if  it  were  included 
in  a  ^  perception  of  visible  bodies '  other  than  itself;  just  as 
in  the  passage  from  the  fourth  book  previously  examined,  he 
speaks  as  if  die  perception,  called  extension,  were  a  quality  of 
some  other  perception.  This  we  must  regard  as  an  exercise 
of  the  privilege  which  he  claims  of  ^  speaking  with  the  vulgar 
while  he  thought  with  the  learned ; '  since,  according  to  him, 
'  visible  body,'  in  any  other  sense  than  that  of  the  impression 
of  coloured  points,  is  properly  a  name  for  a  *  propensity  to 
feign '  resulting  from  a  process  posterior  to  all  impressions 
of  sense.  The  question  remains  whether,  in  speaking  of  an 
impression  as  one  of  ^  coloured  points  disposed  in  a  certain 
manner,'  he  is  not  introducing  a  *  fiction  of  thought '  into 
the  impression  just  as  much  as  in  calling  it  a  '  perception  of 
body.' 

246.  An  impression,  we  know,  can,  according  to  Hume,  The  points 
never  be  of  an  object  in  the  sense  of  involving  a  reference  to  JhemJefves 
anything  other  than  itself.    When  one  is  said,  then,  to  be  impres- 
of  coloured  points,  &c.,  this  can  only  mean  that  itself  t0,  or  "o°»»  *»»d 
consists  of,  such  points.    Thus  the  question  we  have  to  notoo- 
answer  is  only  a  more  definite  form  of  the  one  previously  «"*«"^ 
put,  Can  a  feeling  consist  of  parts?    In  answering  it  we 
must  remember  that  the  parts,  here  supposed  to  be  coloured 
points,  must,  according  to  Hume's  doctrine,  be  themselves 
impressions  or  they  are  nothing.     Consistently  with  this  he 
speaks  of  extension  as  ^  a  compound  impression,  consisting 
of  parts  or  lesser  impressions,  that  are  indivisible  to  the  eye 
or  feeling,  and  may  be  called  impressions  of  atoms  or  cor- 
puscles, endowed  with  colour  and  solidity.'  *     Now,  unless 
we  suppose  that  a  multitude  of  feelings  of  one  and  the  same 

<  P.  3i& 


204  GENERAL  INTIIODUCTION. 

sense  can  be  present  together,  these  *  lesser  impressions' 
must  follow  each  other  and  precede  the  '  componnd  impres- 
sion.' That  is  to  say,  none  of  the  parts  of  which  extension 
consists  will  be  in  existence  at  the  same  time,  and  all  will 
have  ceased  to  exist  before  extension  itself  comes  into  being. 
Can  we,  then,  adopt  the  alternative  supposition  that  a  mnlti- 
tude  of  feelings  of  one  and  the  same  sense  can  be  present 
together  9  In  answering  this  question  according  to  Hume's 
premisses  we  may  not  help  ourselves  by  saying  that  in  a  case 
of  vision  there  really  are  impressions  on  different  parts  of 
the  retina.  To  say  that  it  really  is  so,  is  to  say  that  it  is  so 
for  the  thinking  consciousness— for  a  consciousness  that 
distinguishes  between  what  it  feels  and  what  it  knows.  To 
a  man,  as  simply  seeing  and  while  he  sees,  his  sight  is  not 
an  impression  on  the  retina  at  all,  much  less  a  combination 
of  impressions  on  dijSerent  parts  of  the  retina.  It  is  so  for 
him  only  as  thinking  on  the  organs  of  his  sight ;  or,  if  we 
like,  as  *  seeing '  them  in  another,  but  *  seeing '  them  in  a 
way  determined  by  sundry  suppositions  (bodies,  rays,  and 
the  like)  which  are  not  feelings,  and  therefore  with  Hume 
not  possible  ^  perceptions,'  at  all.  But  it  is  the  impres- 
sion of  sight,  as  it  would  be  for  one  simply  seeing  and  while 
he  sees,  undetermined  by  reference  to  anything  other  than 
itself,  whether  subject  or  object — an  impression  as  it  would 
be  for  a  merely  feeling  consciousness  or  (in  Hume's  lan- 
guage) ^  on  the  same  footing  with  pain  and  pleasure ' — that 
we  have  to  do  with  when,  from  Hume's  point  of  view,  we 
ask  whether  a  multitude  of  such  impressions  can  be  present 
at  once,  i.e.  as  one  impression. 
A  •  com-  247.  If  this  question  had  been  brought  home  to  Hume, 

poHnd  im-   }^q  could  Scarcely  have  avoided  the  admission  that  to  answer 
excluded     it  affirmatively  involved  just  as  much  of  a  contradiction  as 
by-Hume'g  that  which  he  recognises  between  the  *  interrupted '  and 
time/°  °    *  continuous '  existence  of  objects ;  *  and  just  as  in  the  latter 
case  he  gets  over  the  contradiction  by  taking  the  inter- 
rupted existence,  because  the  datum  of  sense,  to  be  the 
reality,  and  the  continued  existence  to  be  a  belief  resulting 
from  ^propensities  to  feign,'  so  in  the  case  before  us  he  must 
have  taken  the  multiplicity  of  successive  impressions  to  be 
the  reality,  and  their  co-existence  as  related  parts  to  be  a 

>  P.  483  and  following,  and  p.  486. 


IF  ALL  IMPRESSIONS  ABE  SUCCESSIVE?  206 

figare  of  speech,  which  he  must  account  for  as  best  he  could. 
As  it  is,  he  so  plays  fast  and  loose  with  the  meaning  of '  im- 
pression '  as  to  hide  the  contradiction  which  is  involved  in 
the  notion  of  a  'compound  impression'  if  impression  is  in- 
terpreted as  feeling — ^the  contradiction,  namely,  that  a  single 
feeling  should  be  felt  to  be  manifold — ^and  in  consequence  loses 
the  chance  of  being  brought  to  that  truer  interpretation  of  the 
compound  impression,  as  the  thought  of  an  object  under  re- 
lations, which  a  more  honest  trial  of  its  reduction  to  feeling 
might  have  shown  to  be  necessary.  To  convict  so  skilful  a 
writer  of  a  contradiction  in  terms  can  never  be  an  easy 
task.  He  does  not  in  so  many  words  tell  us  that  all  im- 
pressions of  sight  must  be  successive,  but  he  does  tell  us 
that  *the  impressions  of  touch,*  which,  indifiFerently  with 
those  of  sight,  he  holds  to  constitute  the  compound  impres- 
sion of  extension, '  change  every  moment  upon  us.'  *  And 
in  the  immediate  sequel  of  the  passage  where  he  has  made 
out  extension  to  be  a  compound  of  co-existent  impressions, 
he  derives  the  idea  of  time  'from  the  succession  of  our 
perceptions  of  every  hmd.,  ideas  as  weU  as  impressions,  and 
impressions  of  reflection  as  well  as  of  sensation.'  The 
parts  of  time,  he  goes  on  to  say,  cannot  be  co-existent ;  and, 
since 'time  itself  is  nothing  but  different  ideas  and  im- 
pressions succeeding  each  other,'  these  parts,  we  must  con- 
clude, are  those  '  perceptions  of  every  kind '  from  which 
ihe  idea  of  time  is  derived.*  It  is  only,  in  fact,  by  availing 
himself  of  the  distinction,  which  he  yet  expressly  rejects, 
between  the  impression  and  its  object,  that  he  disguises  the 
contradiction  in  terms  of  first  pronouncing  certain  impres- 
sions, as  parts  of  space,  co-existent,  and  then  pronouncing  all 
impressions,  as  parts  of  time,  successive.  A  statement  that 
'  as  from  the  coexistence  of  visual,  and  also  of  tactual,  per- 
ceptions we  receive  the  idea  of  extension,  so  from  the  suc- 
cession of  perceptions  of  every  kind  we  form  the  idea  of 
time,'  would  arouse  the  suspicion  of  the  most  casual  reader; 
while  Hume's  version  of  the  same, — '  as  'tis  from  the  dispo- 
sition of  visible  and  tangible  objects  we  receive  the  idea  of 
space,  so  from  the  succession  of  ideas  and  impressions  we 
form  the  idea  of  time  '^ — ^has  the  full  ring  of  empirical 
niaiisibility. 

>  P.  61«.  «  Pp.  342,  343.  •  P.  342. 


206  GENERAL  INTRODUCnON. 

The  fact  248.  This  plausibility  depends  chiefly  on  our  reading  into 
coioxin  Hume's  doctrine  a  physical  theory  which,  as  implying  a 
mix,  not  to  distinction  between  feeling  and  its  real  but  unfelt  cause,  is 
^^^^  strictly  incompatible  with  it.  Is  it  not  an  undoubted  fact, 
the  reader  asks,  that  two  colours  may  combine  to  produce  a 
third  different  from  both — that  red  and  yellow,  for  instance, 
together  produce  orange?  Is  not  this  already  an  in- 
stance of  a  compound  impression  9  Why  may  not  a  like  com- 
position of  unextended  impressions  of  colour  constitute  an 
impression  different  from  any  one  of  the  component  impres- 
sions, viz.  extended  colour?  A  moment's  consideration, 
however,  will  show  that  no  one  has  a  conscious  sensation  at 
once  of  red  and  yellow,  and  of  orange  as  a  compound  of  the 
two.  The  elements  which  combine  to  produce  the  colour 
called  orange  are  not — as  they  ought  tobeifitistobea 
case  of  compound  impression  in  Hume's  sense — ^feelings  of 
the  person  who  sees  the  orange  colour,  but  certain  known 
causes  of  feeling,  confrised  in  language  with  the  feelings, 
which  separately  they  might  produce,  but  which  in  fact  they 
do  not  produce  when  they  combine  to  give  the  sensation  of 
orange ;  and  to  such  causes  of  feeling,  which  are  not  them- 
selyes  feelings,  Hume  properly  can  have  nothing  to  say. 
How  Hum©  249.  So  fex  we  have  been  considering  the  composition  uf 
pearance^  imprcssions  generally,  without  special  reference  to  extension* 
of  identi-  The  Contradiction  pointed  out  arises  from  the  confusion 
Bpa^  with  b^^een  impressions  as  felt  and  impressions  as  thought  of; 
eoiour»  between  feelings  as  they  are  in  themselves,  presented  suc- 
cessively in  time,  and  feelings  as  determined  by  relation  to 
the  thinking  subject,  which  takes  them  out  of  the  flux  of  time 
and  converts  them  into  members  of  a  permanent  whole.  It 
is  in  this  form  that  the  confrision  is  most  apt  to  elude  us. 
When  the  conceived  object  is  one  of  which  the  qualities  can 
really  be  felt,  e.g.  colour,  we  readily  forget  that  a  felt  quality 
is  no  longer  simply  a  feeling.  But  the  case  is  different  when 
the  object  is  one,  like  extension,  which  forces  on  us  the 
question  whether  its  qualities  can  be  felt,  or  presented  in 
feeling,  at  all.  A  compound  of  impressions  of  colour,  to 
adopt  Hume's  phraseology,  even  if  such  composition  were 
possible,  would  still  be  nothing  else  than  an  impression  of 
colour.  In  more  accurate  language,  the  conception,  which 
results  from  the  action  of  thought  upon  feelings  of  colour, 
can  only  be  a  conception  of  colour.     Is  extension,  then,  the 


COLOUR  AND  COLOURED  POINTS.  307 

•nme  as  colour?  To  say  that  it  was  would  imply  that 
geometry  was  a  science  of  colour ;  and  Hume,  though  ready 
enough  to  outrage  *  Metaphysics  and  School  Divinity/  always 
stops  reverently  short  of  direct  offence  to  the  mathematical 
sciences.  As  has  been  said  above,  of  the  three  main  questions 
about  the  idea  of  extension  which  his  doctrine  raises — Is  it 
itself  extended?  Is  it  possible  without  reference  to  some- 
tiiing  other  than  a  possible  impression  ?  Is  it  the  same  as 
the  idea  of  colour  or  tangibility? — ^the  last  is  the  only  one 
which  he  can  scarcely  even  profess  to  answer  in  the  affirma- 
tive.' Even  when  he  has  gone  so  far  as  to  speak  of  the  parts  and  ac- 
of  a  perception,  a  sound  instinct  compels  him,  instead  of  ^^b-  ^ 
identifying  the  perception  directly  with  extension,  to  speak  Btaraction 
of  it  as  '  affording  through  the  situation  of  its  parts  the  ^^  *^^^' 
notion  of  extension.*  In  like  manner,  when  he  has  asserted 
extension  to  be  a  compound  of  impressions,  he  avoids  the 
proper  consequence  of  the  assertion  by  speaking  of  the  com- 
ponent impressions  as  those,  not  of  colour  but,  of  coloured 
points,  'atoms  or  corpuscles  endowed  with  colour  and 
solidity ; '  and,  again,  does  not  call  extension  the  compound 
of  these  simply,  but  the  compound  of  them  as  '  disposed  in  a 
certain  manner.'  When  the  idea  which  is  a  copy  of  this 
impression  has  to  be  spoken  of,  the  expression  is  varied 
again.  It  is  an  *  idea  of  the  coloured  points  and  of  the  mem- 
ner  of  their  appea/rance/  or  of  their  *  disposition.'  The  dispo- 
sition of  the  parts  having  been  thus  virtually  distinguished 
from  their  colour,  it  is  easy  to  suppose  that,  finding  a 
likeness  in  the  disposition  of  points  under  every  unlikeness 
of  their  colour, '  we  omit  the  peculiarities  of  colour,  as  far  as 
possible,  and  found  an  abstract  idea  merely  on  that  disposi- 
tion of  points,  or  manner  of  appearance,  in  which  they 
agree.  Nay,  even  when  the  resemblance  is  carried  beyond 
the  objects  of  one  sense,  and  the  impressions  of  touch  are 
found  to  be  similar  to  iJiose  of  sight  in  the  disposition  of 
their  parts,  this  does  not  hinder  the  abstract  idea  from 
representing  both  on  account  of  their  resemblance.'  * 

260.  If  words  have  any  meaning,  the  above  must  imply  Id  ao 
that  the  disposition  of  points  is  at  least  a  different  idea  from  ^°^°^'  ^^ 
either  colour  or  tangibility,  however  impossible  it  may  be  for  that  space 

is  a  rela- 

"  Above,  paragraph  283.     Though,  «  Above,  paragraph  236.  ^^^ 

88  ire  shall  see,  he  does  so  in  one  pas-  '  P.  341. 

■age. 


S06  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

118  to  ezperienoe  it  without  one  or  other  of  the  latter.  Nor 
can  we  suppose  that  this  impression,  other  than  colour,  is  one 
that  first  results  from  the  composition  of  colours,  even  if  we 
admit  that  such  composition  could  yield  a  resiilt  different 
from  colour.  According  to  Hume,  the  components  of  the 
compound  impression  are  already  impressions  of  coloured 
*  points,  atoms,  or  corpuscles,'  and  such  points  imply  just  that 
limitation  by  mutual  externality,  which  is  abeady  the  dispo- 
sition in  question.  Is  this  '  disposition,'  then,  an  impression 
Son  wlSh  ^^  sensation  P  If  so,  *  through  which  of  the  senses  is  it 
is  not  a  received  ?  If  it  be  perceived  by  the  eyes  it  must  be  a  colour,* 
P**»^i«  Ac.  &c. ;  *  but  from  colour,  the  impression,  with  which  Hume 
would  have  identified  it  if  he  could,  he  yet  finds  himself  obliged 
virtually  to  distinguish  it.  It  is  a  relation,  and  not  even 
one  of  those  relations,  such  as  resemblance,  which  in  Hume's 
language,  *  depending  on  the  nature  of  the  impressions  re- 
lated,'* may  plausibly  be  reckoned  to  be  themselves  impressions. 
The  'disposition'  of  parts  and  their '  situation'  he  uses  inter- 
changeably, and  the  situation  of  impressions  he  expressly 
opposes  to  their  '  nature' ' — ^that  nature  in  respect  of  which 
all  impressions,  call  them  what  we  like,  are  '  originally  on 
the  same  footing'  with  pain  and  pleasure.  Consistently 
with  this  he  pronounces  the  *  external  position '  of  objects — 
their  position  as  bodies  external  to  each  other  and  to  our 
body — ^to  be  no  datum  of  sense,  no  impression  or  idea,  at  all.^ 
Our  belief  in  it  has  to  be  accounted  for  as  a  complex  result 
of  *  propensities  to  feign.'  How,  then,  can  there  be  an  impres- 
sion of  that  which  does  not  belong  to  the  nature  of  any 
impression  ?  What  difference  is  there  between  '  bodies '  and 
'corpuscles  endowed  with  colour  and  solidity,'  that  the 
outwardness  of  the  latter  to  each  other — also  called  their 

*  Abore,  pansraph  208.  nature,  but  oonoorning  their  relations 

*  P.  872,  *  Philosophical  relatioDs  and  situation/ 
may  be  diyided  into  two  classes :  into  ^  P.  481.  In  there  showing  that 
such  as  depend  entirely  on  the  ideas  the  senses  alone  cannot  oonTinoe  us 
which  we  compare  together;  and  such  of  the  external  existence  of  body,  he 
as  may  be  changed  without  any  change  remarks  that  '  sounds,  tastes,  and 
in  the  ideas.  .  .  .  The  relations  smells  appear  not  to  have  any  existence 
of  contiguity  and  distance  between  in  extension ; '  and  (p.  483)  *  as  far  as 
two  objects  may  be  changed  without  the  senses  are  judges,  all  perceptions 
any  change  in  the  objects  themselTM  are  the  same  in  the  manner  of  their 
or  their  ittoas.*  existence.'      Therefore   perceptions    of 

'  P.  480.    '  When  we  doubt  whether  sight  cannot   have    '  an  existence    in 

sensations  present  themselves  aa  dis-  extension'    any   more  than   'sounds, 

tinct  objects  or  as  mere  impressions,  tastes,  and  smells ; '  and  if  so,  how  can 

the  difficulty  is  not  concerning  their  'existence  in  extension' be  a  perception? 


NO  SEPARATE   'IDEAS'   OF  SPACE  AND  TIME.      209 

'  distance  *  firom  each  other  * — should  be  an  impression,  while 
it  is  admitted  that  the  same  relation  between  ^bodies'  cannot 
be  soP 

251.  To  have  plainly  admitted  that  it  was  not  an  impres-  No  logical 

sion  mnst  have  compelled  Hame  either  to  discard  the  *  ab-  betw©M  ^* 

stract  idea '  with  which  geometry  deals,  or  to  admit  the  identifying 

possibility  of  ideas  other  than  *  fainter  impressions/    It  is  a  ^^^^j 

principle  on  which  he  insists  with  much  emphasis  and  repe-  admitting 

tition,  tliat  whatever  *  objects,'  *  impressions,'  or  *  ideas  *  are  *°/^i^ 

distinguishable  are  also  separable.'      Now  if  there  is  an  fromau 

abstract  idea  of  extension,  it  can  scarcely  be  other  than  dis-  >^P«»- 

sion> 

tinguishable,  and  consequently  (according  to  Hume's  account 
of  the  relation  of  idea  to  impression)  derived  from  a  dis- 
tinguiBhable  and  therefore  separable  impression.  It  would 
seem  then  that  Hume  cannot  escape  conviction  of  one  of  two 
inconsistencies ;  either  that  of  supposing  a  separate  impres- 
sion of  extension,  which  yet  is  not  of  the  nature  of  any 
assignable  sensation ;  or  that  of  supposing  an  abstract  idea 
of  it  in  the  absence  of  any  such  impression.  We  shall  find 
fhat  he  does  not  directly  face  either  horn  of  the  dilemma, 
bat  evades  both  of  them.  He  admits  that '  the  ideas  of  space 
and  time  are  no  separate  and  distinct  ideas,  but  merely  those 
of  the  manner  or  order  in  which  objects '  (sc.  impressions) 
*  exist.' •  In  the  Fourth  Book,  where  the  equivalence  of  im- 
pression to  feeling  is  more  consistently  carried  out,  the  fact 
that  what  is  commonly  reckoned  an  impression  is  really  a 
judgment  about  the  ^  manner  of  existence,'  as  opposed  to  the 
'  nature,'  of  impressions,  is  taken  as  sufficient  proof  that  it  is 
no  impression  at  all ;  and  if  not  an  impression,  therefore  not 
an  idea.^  He  thus  involuntarily  recognized  the  true  di£fer- 
ence  between  feeling  and  thought,  between  the  mere  occur- 
rence of  feelings  and  the  presentation  of  that  occurrence  by 
the  self-conscious  subject  to  itself;  and,  if  only  he  had 
known  what  he  was  about  in  the  recognition,  might  have 
anticipated  Kant's  distinction  between  the  matter  and  form 
of  sensation.  In  the  Second  Book,  however,  he  will  neither 
say  explicitly  that  space  is  an  impression  of  colour  or  a  com- 
pound of  colours — that  would  be  to  extinguish  geometry ; 
nor  yet  that  it  is  impression  of  sense  separate  from  that  of 
colour — ^that  would  lay  him  open  to  the  retort  that  he  was 

'  Above,  paragraphs  235  and  244.  '  P.  346. 

'  P.  319,  326,  332,  335  518.  *  P.  480. 

YOL.  I.  P 


210  GENERAL  DnHODUCTIOX. 

▼irtaally  introdacing  a  sixth  sense ;  nor  on  the  other  hand 
^ill  he  boldly  avow  of  it,  as  he  afterwards  does  of  body, 
that  it  is  a  fiction.  He  denies  that  it  is  a  separate  impress 
sion,  so  far  as  that  is  necessary  for  aroiding  the  challenge  to 
specify  the  sense  through  which  it  is  received ;  he  distin- 
guishes it  from  a  mere  impression  of  sight,  when  it  is  neces- 
sary to  avoid  its  simple  identification  with  colour.  By 
speaking  of  it  as  ^  the  manner  in  which  objects  exist ' — so 
long  as  he  is  not  confronted  with  the  declarations  of  the 
Fourth  Book  or  with  the  question  how,  the  objects  being  im- 
pressions, their  order  of  existence  can  be  at  once  that  of 
succession  in  time  and  of  co-existence  in  space — ^he  gains  the 
credit  for  it  of  being  a  datum  of  sights  yet  so  far  distinct 
from  colour  as  to  be  a  possible  ^foundation  for  an  abstract 
idea/  representative  also  of  objects  not  coloured  at  all  but 
tangible.  At  the  same  time,  if  pressed  with  the  question 
how  it  could  be  an  impression  of  sight  and  yet  not  inter- 
changeable with  colour,  he  could  put  off  the  questioner  by 
reminding  him  that  he  never  made  it  a  *  separate  or  distinct 
impression,  but  one  of  the  manner  in  which  objects  exist.' 
In  his  ac-  252.  Disguisc  it  as  he  might,  however,  the  admission  that 
^e°id^  ag  there  was  in  some  sense  an  abstract  idea  of  space,  which  the 
abstract,  existence  of  geometry  required  of  him,  really  carried  with  it 
rettiTy  in-  ^^^  admissiou  either  of  a  distinct  impression  of  the  same,  or 
trodacea  of  some  transmuting  process  by  which  the  idea  may  become 
hnween^'^  what  the  impression  is  not.  His  way  of  evading  this  conse- 
feeiing  and  queuce  has  been  already  noticed  in  our  examination  of  his 
tion  ^^  doctrine  of  *  abstract  ideas '  generally,  though  without  special 
reference  to  extension.^  It  consists  in  asserting  figure  and 
colour  to  be  *  reaUy,'  or  as  an  impression,  ^  the  same  and  in- 
distinguishable,' but  different  as  ^  relations  and  resemblances ' 
of  the  impression ;  in  other  words,  different  according  to  the 
*  light  in  which  the  impression  is  considered '  or  *  the  aspect 
in  which  it  is  viewed.'  Of  these  *  separate  resemblances  and 
relations,'  however,  are  there  idea^  or  are  there  not?  If 
there  are  not,  they  are  according  to  Hume  nothing  of  which 
we  are  conscious  at  all ;  if  there  are,  there  must  be  distin- 
guishable, and  therefore  separable,  impressions  corresponding. 
To  say  then  that  figure  and  colour  form  one  and  the  same 
indistinguishable  impression,  and  yet  that  they  constitute 

^  Above,  paragraph  218. 


UNIVERSITY, 
HOW  IS  ABSTRACTION  V^^>sr^f?>^l^^^*^'^       ^^^ 

*  different  resemblances  and  relations,'  without  such  explana- 
tion as  Hume  cannot  consistently  give,  is  in  fact  a  contradic- 
tion in  terms.  The  true  explanation  is  that  the  *  impression ' 
has  a  different  meaning,  when  figure  and  colour  are  said  to 
be  inseparable  in  the  impression,  from  that  which  it  has 
when  spoken  of  as  a  subject  of  different  resemblances  and 
relations.  In  the  former  sense  it  is  the  feeling  pure  and 
simple — one  as  presented  singly  in  time,  after  another  and 
before  a  third.  In  this  sense  it  is  doubtless  insusceptible  of 
distinction  into  qualities  of  figure  and  colour,  because  (for 
reasons  already  stated)  it  can  have  no  qualities  at  all.  But 
the  ^  simplicity  in  which  many  different  resemblances  and 
relations  may  be  contained '  is  quite  other  than  this  single*- 
ness.  It  is  the  unity  of  an  object  thought  of  under  manifold 
relations — a  unity  of  which  Hume,  reducing  all  conscious- 
ness to  ^  impression '  and  impression  to  feeling,  has  no  con- 
sistent account  to  give.  Failing  such  an  account,  the  unity 
of  the  intelligible  object,  and  the  singleness  of  the  feeling  in 
time,  are  simply  confused  with  each  other.  It  is  only  an 
object  as  thought  of,  not  a  feeling  as  felt,  that  can  properly 
be  said  to  have  qualities  at  all ;  while  it  is  only  because  it  is 
still  regarded  as  a  feeling  that  qualities  of  it,  which  cannot 
be  referred  to  separate  impressions,  are  pronounced  the  same 
and  indistinguishable.  K  the  idea  of  space  is  other  than  a 
feeling  grown  fainter,  the  sole  reason  for  regarding  it  as 
originally  an  impression  of  colour  disappears ;  if  it  is  such  a 
feeling,  it  cannot  contain  such  ^  different  resemblances  and 
relations'  as  render  it  representative  of  objects  not  only 
coloured  in  every  possible  way,  but  not  coloured  at  all. 

253.  It  is  thus  by  playing  fast  and  loose  with  the  differ-  yet  avoids 
ence  between  feeling  and  conception  that  Hume  is  able,  ftppe?»n«« 
when  the  character  of  extension  as  an  mtelligible  relation  by  treating 
is  urged,  to  reply  that  it  is  the  same  with  the  feeling  of  'consider- 
colour ;  and  on  the  other  hand,  when  asked  how  there  then  the  rela- 
can  be  an  abstract  idea  of  it,  to  reply  that  this  does  not  tiona  of  a 
mean  a  separate  idea,  but  coloured  objects  considered  under  ^  ^f  j^  °^ 
a  certain  relation,  viz.    under  that  which  consists  in  the  were  itself 
disposition  of  their  parts.     The  most  effective  way  of  meet-  J^/*^^' 
ing  him  on  his  own  ground  is  to  ask  him  how  it  is,  since 
'  consideration '  can  only  mean  a  succession  of  ideas,  and 
ideas  are  fainter  impressions,  that  extension,  being  one  and 
the  same  impression  with  colour,  can  by  any  *  consideration  * 

?  2 


212  GENERAL  mTRODUCTIOX. 

become  so  different  from  it  as  to  constitute  a  resemblance  to 
objects  that  are  not  coloured  at  all.  The  true  explanation, 
according  to  his  own  terminology,  would  be  that  the  re- 
semblance between  the  white  globe  and  all  other  globes, 
being  a  resemblance  not  of  impressions  but  of  such  relations 
between  impressions  as  do  not  ^  depend  on  the  nature  of  the 
impressions 'related,  is  unaffected  by  the  presence  or  absence 
of  colour  or  any  other  sensation.  Of  such  relations,  how- 
ever, there  can  properly,  if  ideas  are  fEunter  impressions,  be 
no  ideas  at  all.  In  regard  to  those  of  cause  and  identity 
Hume  virtually  admits  this ;  but  the  ^  propensities  to  feign,' 
by  which  in  the  case  of  these  latter  relations  he  tries  to 
account  ibr  the  appearance  of  theie  being  ideas  of  them, 
cannot  plausibly  be  applied  to  relations  in  space  and  time, 
of  which,  as  we  shall  see,  ideas  must  be  assumed  in  order  to 
account  for  the  *  fictions '  of  body  and  necessary  connexion. 
Since  then  they  cannot  be  derived  from  any  separate  im- 
pression without  the  introduction  in  effect  of  a  sixth  sense, 
and  since  all  constitutive  action  of  thought  as  distinct 
from  feeling  is  denied  by  Hume,  the  only  way  to  save  ap- 
pearances is  to  treat  the  order  in  which  a  multitude  of 
impressions  present  themselves  as  the  same  with  each  im- 
pression, even  though  immediately  afterwards  it  may  have  to 
be  confessed,  that  it  is  so  independent  of  the  nature  of  any  or 
all  of  the  impressions  as  to  be  the  foundation  of  an  abstract 
idea,  which  is  representative  of  other  impressions  having 
nothing  whatever  in  common  with  them  but  the  order  of 
appearance.  This  once  allowed — ^an  abstract  idea  having^ 
been  somehow  arrived  at  which  is  not  really  the  copy  of 
any  impression — it  is  easy  to  argue  back  from  the  abstract 
idea  to  an  impression,  and  because  there  is  an  idea  of  the 
composition  of  points  to  substitute  a  '  composition  of  coloured 
points '  for  colour  as  the  original  impression.  From  such 
impression,  being  already  extension,  ^e  idea  of  extension 
can  undoubtedly  be  abstracted. 
Summary  254.  We  now  know  what  becomes  of  *  extended  matter ' 
dicSoM  in  when  the  doctrine,  which  has  only  to  be  stated  to  find  accept- 
hisaccoaot  ance,  that  we  cannot  *  look  for  anything  anywhere  but  in  our 
do^^°  ideas ' — ^in  other  words  that  for  us  there  is  no  world  but 
consciousness — is  fairly  carried  out.  Ite  position  must 
become  more  and  more  equivocal,  as  the  assumption,  that 
consciousness  reveals  to  us  an  alien  matter,  has  in  one  after 


QUANTITY,  AS  SUCU,  IGNORED.  213 

another  of  its  details  to  be  rejected,  until  a  principle  of 
sjnthesis  within  consciousness  is  found  to  explain  it.  In 
default  of  this,  the  feeling  consciousness  has  to  be  made  to 
take  its  place  as  best  it  may ;  which  means  that  what  is 
said  of  it  as  feeling  has  to  be  unsaid  of  it  as  extended,  and 
vice  versd.  As  feeling,  it  carries  no  reference  to  anything 
other  than  itself,  to  an  object  of  which  it  is  a  quality  5  as 
extended,  it  is  a  qualified  object.  As  extended  again,  its 
qualities  are  relations  of  coexistent  parts ;  as  feelingy  it  is 
an  unlimited  succession,  and  therefore,  not  being  a  possible 
whole,  can  have  no  parts  at  all.  Finally  bs  feeling,  it  must 
in  each  moment  of  existence  either  be  ^  on  the  same  foot- 
ing '  with  pain  and  pleasure  or  else — a  distinction^between 
impressions  of  sensation  and  reflection  being  unwarrantably 
admitted — be  a  colour,  a  taste,  a  sound,  a  smell,  or  ^  tangi- 
bility;' as  extended,  it  is  an  ^ order  of  appearance'  or  ^dis- 
position of  corpuscles,'  which,  being  predicable  indifferently 
at  any  rate  of  two  of  these  sensations,  can  no  more  be  the 
same  with  either  than  either  can  be  the  same  with  the 
other.  It  is  not  the  fault  of  Hume  but  his  merit  that,  in 
undertaking  to  maintain  more  strictly  than  others  the 
identification  of  extension  with  feeling,  he  brought  its  im- 
possibility more  clearly  into  view.  The  pity  is  that  having 
carried  his  speculative  enterprise  so  far  before  he  was  thirty, 
he  allowed  literary  vanity  to  interfere  with  its  consist- 
ent pursuit^  caring  only  to  think  out  the  philosophy  which 
he  inherited  so  far  as  it  enabled  him  to  pose  with  ad- 
vantage against  Mystics  and  Dogmatists,  but  not  to  that 
further  issue  which  is  the  entrance  to  the  philosophy  of 
Eant. 

255.  As  it  was,  he  never  came  fairly  to  ask  himself  the  He  gives 
fruitful  question.  How  the  sciences  of  quantity  *  continuous  "^  ***^S^ 
and  discreet,'  which  undoubtedly  do  exist,  are  possible  to  a  as  faclL 
merely  feeling    consciousness,   because,  while    professedly 
reducing  all  consciousness  to  this   form,,  he   still  allowed 
himself  to  interpret  it  in  the  terms  of  these  sciences  and, 
having  done   so,   could  easily  account  for  their  apparent 
*  abstraction '  from  it.     If  colour  is  already  for  feeling  a 
magnitude,  as  is  implied  in   calling  it  a  ^  composition  of 
coloured  points,'  the  question,  how  a  knowledge  of  magni- 
tude is  possible,  is  of  course  superfluous.    It  only  remains  to 
deal,  as  Hume  professes  to  do,  with  the  apparent  abstraction 

*P3 


214  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

in  mathematics  of  magnitude  from  colour  and  the  conse- 
quent suppositions  of  pure  space  and  infinite  divisibility. 
Any  ulterior  problem  he  ignores.  That  magnitude  is  not 
any  the  more  a  feeling  for  being  ^  endowed  with  colour '  he 
shows  no  suspicion.  He  pursues  his  'sensationalism'  in 
short,  in  its  bearing  on  mathematics,  just  as  far  as  Berkeley 
did  and  no  further.  The  question  at  issue,  as  he  conceived 
it,  was  not  as  to  the  possibility  of  magnitude  altogether,  but 
only  as  to  the  existence  of  a  vacuum ;  not  as  to  the  possi- 
bility of  number  altogether,  but  only  as  to  the  infinity  of 
its  parts.  Just  as  he  takes  magnitude  for  granted  as  found 
in  extension,  and  extension  as  equivalent  to  the  feeling  of 
colour,  so  he  takes  number  for  granted,  without  indeed  any 
explicit  account  of  the  impression  in  which  it  is  to  be  foimd, 
but  apparently  as  found  in  time,  which  again  is  identified 
with  the  succession  of  impressions.  In  the  second  part  of 
the  Treatise,  though  the  idea  of  number  is  assumed  and  an 
account  is  given  of  it  which  is  supposed  to  be  fatal  to  the 
infinite  divisibility  of  extension,  we  are  told  nothing  of  the 
impression  or  impressions  from  which  it  is  derived.  In  the 
Fourth  Part,  however,  there  is  a  passage  in  which  a  certain 
consideration  of  time  is  spoken  of  as  its  source. 
Hifl  ac-  256.  In  the  latter  passage,  in  order  to  account  for  the 

2^2^     idea  of  identity,  he  is  supposing  *a  single  object  placed 
tion  be-      before  us  and  surveyed  for  any  time  without  our  discovering 
Ti^'^and    ^  ^^  any  variation  or  interruption.*     *When  we  consider 
Number,     any  two   points  of  this  time,*  he  proceeds,  *  we  may  place 
them  in  different   lights.     We  may  either    survey  them 
at  the  veiy  same  instant ;  in  which  case  they  give  us  the 
idea  of  number,  both  by  themselves  and  by  the  object, 
which  must  be  multiplied  in  order  to  be  conceived  at  once, 
as  existent  in  these  two  different  points  of  time :  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  we  may  trace  the  succession  of  time  by  a  like 
succession  of  ideas,  and  conceiving  first  one  moment,  along 
with  the  object  then  existent,  imagine  afterwards  a  change 
in  the  time  without  any  variation  or  interruption  in  the  ob- 
ject ;  in  which  case  it  gives  us  the  idea  of  unity.*  * 
What  does       257.  A  slight  scrutiny  of  this  passage  will  show  that  it  is 
itoometo?  a  prolonged  tautology.    The  difference  is  merely  verbal  be- 
tween the  processes  by  which  the  ideas  of  number  and  unity 

»  P.  490. 


TIME  AND  NUMBER.  315 

Are  Beyerally  supposed  to  be  given,  except  tliat  in  the  former 
process  it  is  the  moment  of  surveying  the  times  that  is 
supposed  to  be  one,  while  the  times  themselves  are  many; 
in  the  latter  it  is  the  object  that  is  supposed  to  be  one,  but 
the  times  many.  According  to  the  second  version  of  the 
former  process — ^that  according  to  which  the  different  times 
surveyed  together  are  said  to  give  the  idea  of  number  *  by 
their  object ' — even  this  difference  disappears.  The  only  re- 
maining distinction  is  that  in  the  one  case  the  object  is 
supposed  to  be  given  as  one,  ^without  interruption  or 
variation,'  but  to  become  multiple  as  conceived  to  exist  in 
different  moments;  in  the  other  the  objects  are  supposed  to 
be  given  as  manifold,  being  ideas  presented  in  successive 
times,  but  to  become  one  through  the  imaginary  restriction 
of  the  multiplicity  to  the  times  in  distinction  from  the 
object.  Undoubtedly  any  one  of  these  yerbally  distinct 
processes  will  yield  indifferently  the  ideas  of  number  and  of 
unity,  since  these  ideas  in  strict  correlativity  are  presupposed 
by  each  of  them.  *  Two  points  of  time  surveyed  at  the  same 
time'  will  give  us  the  idea  of  number  because,  being  a 
duality  in  unity,  they  are  already  a  number.  So,  too,  and 
for  the  same  reason,  will  the  object,  one  in  itself  but  multiple 
as  existent  at  different  times.  Nor  does  the  idea  given  by 
imagining  ideas,  successively  presented,  to  be  ^  one  uninter- 
rapted  object,'  differ  from  the  above  more  than  many-in-one 
differs  from  one-in-many.  The  real  questions  of  course  are. 
How  two  times  can  be  surveyed  at  one  time ;  how  a  single 
object  can  be  multiplied  or  become  many ;  how  a  succes- 
sion of  ideas  can  be  imagined  to  be  an  unvaried  and  unin- 
terrupted object.  To  these  questions  Hume  has  no  answer 
to  give.  His  reduction  of  thought  to  feeling  logically  ex- 
cluded an  answer,  and  the  only  alternative  for  him  was  to 
ignore  or  disguise  them. 

258.  In  the  passage  from  part  n.  of  the  Treatise,  already  Unitei 
referred  to,  he  distinctly  tells  us  that  the  unity  to  which  •^°"® 
existence  belongs  excludes  multiplicity.    ^  Existence  itself  e^st^ 
belongs  to  unity,  and  is  never  applicable  to  number  but  on  number  a 
accoimt  of  the  unites  of  which  the  number  is  composed,  denomin*. 
Twenty  men  may  be  said  to  exist,  but  'tis  only  because  one,  tlon.* 
two,  three,  four,  &c.,  are  existent.    •   ..    •    .    A  unite,  con- 
sisting of  a  number  of  fractions,  is  merely  a  fictitious  de- 
nomination, which  the  mind  may  apply  to  any  quantity  of 


916 


GENERAL  INTRODUCnON. 


Yet 

'nnites' 
and  '  nma- 
ber'  an 
oorrela- 
tire;  and 
the  rap- 
poted  fic- 
tion nnae* 
eonntable. 


objects  it  collects  together;  nor  can  such  an  nnity  any  more 
exist  alone  than  number  can,  as  being  in  reidity  a  true 
number.  But  the  unity  which  can  exist  alone,  and  whose 
existence  is  necessary  to  that  of  all  number,  is  of  another 
kind  and  must  be  perfectly  indivisible  and  incapable  of 
being  resolved  into  any  lesser  unity.' '  What  then  is  the 
'  unity  which  can  exist  alone '?  The  answer,  according  to 
Hume,  must  be  that  it  is  an  impression  separately  felt  and 
not  resoluble  into  any  other  impressions.  But  then  the 
question  arises,  how  a  succession  of  such  impressions  can 
form  a  number  or  sum;  and  if  they  cannot,  how  the  so- 
called  real  unity  or  separate  impression  can  in  any  sense  be 
a  unite,  since  a  unite  is  only  so  as  one  of  a  sum.  To  put  the 
question  otherwise.  Is  it  not  the  case  that  a  unite  has  no  more 
meaning  without  number  than  number  without  unites,  and 
that  every  number  is  not  only  just  such  a  *  fictitious  denomi- 
nation,' as  Hume  pronounces  a  *  unite  consisting  of  a  number 
of  fractions '  to  be,  but  a  fiction  impossible  for  our  conscious- 
ness according  to  Hume's  account  of  it?  It  will  not  do  to 
say  that  such  a  question  touches  only  the  fiction  of '  abstract 
number,'  but  not  the  existence  of  numbered  objects ;  that 
(to  take  Hume's  instance)  twenty  men  exist  with  the  exist- 
ence of  each  individual  man,  each  real  unit,  of  the  lot.  It  is 
precisely  the  numerability  of  objects — ^not  indeed  their  exist- 
ence, if  that  only  means  their  successive  appearance,  but 
their  existence  as  a  svm — ^that  is  in  question.  If  such  numer- 
ability is  possible  for  such  a  consciousness  as  Hume  makes 
ours  to  be ;  in  other  words,  if  he  can  explaiu  the  fact  that 
we  count ;  ^  abstract  number '  may  no  doubt  be  left  to  take 
care  of  itself.  Is  it  then  possible  9  ^  Separate  impressions  ' 
mean  impressions  felt  at  different  times,  which  accordingly 
can  no  more  co-exist  than,  to  use  Hume's  expression,  ^  the 
year  1787  can  concur  with  the  year  1738;'  whereas  the 
constituents  of  a  sum  must,  as  such,  co-exist.  Thus  when 
we  are  told  that  Hwenty  may  be  said  to  exist  because 
one,  two,  three,  Ac.,  are  existent^'  the  alleged  reason,  under- 
stood as  Hume  was  bound  to  understand  it,  is  incompatible 
with  the  supposed  consequence.  The  existence  of  an  object 
would,  to  him,  mean  no  more  than  the  occurrence  of  an 
impression ;  but  that  one  impression  should  occur,  and  then 


>  P.  338. 


CAN  IDEA  OF  TIME  BE  FEELING  IN  TIME?         217 

another  and  then  another,  is  the  exact  opposite  of  their  co- 
existence as  a  sum  of  impressions,  and  it  is  such  co-existence 
that  is  implied  when  the  impressions  are  counted  and  pro- 
nounced BO  many.  Thus  when  Hume  tells  us  that  a  single 
object,  by  being  *  multiplied  in  order  to  be  conceived  at  once 
OS  existent  in  different  points  of  time/  gives  us  the  idea  of 
Bumber,  we  are  forced  to  ask  him  what  precisely  it  is  which 
thus,  being  one,  can  become  manifold.  Is  it  a  *  xmite  that 
can  exist  alone '  9  That,  having  no  parts,  cannot  become 
manifold  by  resolution.  *  But  it  may  by  repetition?  *  No, 
for  it  is  a  separate  impression,  and  the  repetition  of  an  im- 
pression cannot  co-exist,  so  as  to  form  one  sum,  with  ita 
former  occurrence.  '  But  it  may  be  thought  of  as  doing  so  ?' 
No,  for  that,  according  to  Hume,  could  only  mean  that  feel- 
ings might  concur  in  a  fainter  stage  though  they  could  not 
in  a  livelier.  Is  the  single  object  then  a  unite  which  already 
consists  of  parts  P  But  that  is  a  ^  fictitious  denomination,' 
and  presupposes  the  very  idea  of  number  that  has  to  be  ac« 
counted  for. 

259.  The  impossibility  of  getting  number,  as  a  many-in-  ides  of 
one,  out  of  the  succession  of  feelings,  so  long  as  the  self  is  ^™®  ®^«^ 
treated  as  only  another  name  for  that  succession,  is  less  easy  ^^n^T 
to  disguise  when  the  supposed  units  are  not  merely  given  in  a^le  on 
succession,  but  are  actually  the  moments  of  the  succession ;  prbdplM. 
in  other  words,  when  time  is  the  many-in-one  to  be  accounted 
for.    How  can  a  multitude  of  feelings  of  which  no  two  are 
present  together,  undetermined  by  relation  to  anything  other 
than  the  feelings,  be  at  the  same  time  a  consciousness  of  the 
relation  between  the  moments  in  which  the  feelings  are 
given,  or  of  a  sum  which  these  moments  formP    How  can 
there  be  a  relation  between  ^objects'  of  which  one  has 
ceased  before  the  other  has  begun  to  exist  P    '  For  the  same 
reason,'  says  Hume,  'that  the  year  1737  cannot  concur  with 
the  present  year  1738,  every  moment  must  be  distinct  from, 
and  posterior  or  antecedent  to,  another.'  ^   How  then  can  the 
present  moment  form  one  sum  with  all  past  moments,  the 
present  year  with  all  past  years ;  the  sum  which  we  indicate 
by  the  number  1 738  ?  The  answer  of  common  sense  of  course 
\vill  be  that,  though  the  feeling  of  one  moment  is  really  past 
before  that  of  another  begins,  yet  thought  retains  the  former, 
and  combining  it  with  the  latter,  gets  the  idea  of  time  both 

»  P.  838. 


218  GENERAL  INTROBTJCTJON; 

as  a  relation  and  as  a  sam.  Such  an  answer,  howeTer,  im- 
plies that  the  retaining  and  combining  thought  is  other 
than  the  succession  of  the  feelings,  and  while  it  takes  this 
succession  to  be  the  reality,  imports  into  it  that  determina^ 
tion  by  the  relations  of  past  and  present  which  it  can  only 
deriye  from  the  retaining  and  combining  thought  opposed  to 
it.  It  is  thus  both  inconsistent  with  Hume's  doctrine, 
which  allows  no  such  distinction  between  thought,  t.6*  the 
succession  of  ideas,  and  the  succession  of  impressions,  and 
inconsistent  with  itself.  Yet  Hume  by  disguising  both  in- 
consistencies contrives  to  avail  himself  of  it.  By  tacitly 
assuming  that  a  conception  of  *  the  manner  in  which  impres- 
i^ions  appear  to  the  mind '  is  given  in  and  with  the  occurrence 
of  the  impressions,  he  imports  the  coneciousness  of  time, 
both  as  relation  and  as  numerable  quantity,  into  the  sequence 
of  impressions.  He  thus  gains  the  advantage  of  being  able 
to  speak  of  this  sequence  indifferently  under  predicates  which 
properly  exclude  each  other.  He  can  make  it  now  a  con- 
sciousness in  time,  now  a  consciousness  of  itself  as  in  time ; 
now  a  series  that  cannot  be  summed,  now  a  conception  of  the 
'  sum  of  the  series.     The  sequence  of  feelings,  then,  having 

been  so  dealt  with  as  to  make  it  appear  in  effect  that  time 
can  be  felty  that  it  should  be  thougU  of  can  involve  no  further 
difficulty.  The  conception,  smuggled  into  sensitive  experi- 
ence as  an  '  impression/  can  be  extracted  from  it  again  as 
^  idea,'  without  ostensible  departure  from  the  principle  that 
the  idea  is  only  the  weaker  impression. 

260.  *  The  idea  of  time  is  not  derived  from  a  particular 

Hit  offten-   impression  mixed  up  with  others  and  plainly  distinguishable 

"^^®  don    ^°^  them,  but  arises  altogether  from  the  manner  in  which 

of  iu  impressions  appear  ix>  the  mind,  without  making  one  of  the 

number.  Five  notes  played  on  the  flute  give  us  the  impression 

and  idea  of  time,  though  time  be  not  a  sixth  impression 

which  presents  itself  to  the  hearing  or  any  other  of  the 

senses.     Nor  is  it  a  sixth  impression  which  the  mind  by 

reflection  finds  in  itself.     These  five  sounds,  making  their 

appearance  in  this  particular  manner,  excite  no  emotion  or 

affection  in  the  mind,  which  being  observed  by  it  can  give 

rise  to  a  new  idea.     For  that  is  necessary  to  produce  a  new 

idea  of  reflection;  nor  can  the  mind,  by  revolving  over  a 

thousand  times  all  its  ideas  of  sensation,  ever  extract  from 

them  any  new  original  idea,  unless  nature  has  so  fiumed  its 


NO  'IMPRESSION'  OF  TIME,  219 

faculties  that  it  feels  some  new  original  impression  arise 
from  such  a  contemplation.  But  here  it  only  takes  notice  of 
the  manner  in  which  the  different  sounds  make  their  appear- 
ance, and  that  it  may  afterwards  consider  without  considering 
these  particular  sounds,  but  may  conjoin  it  with  any  other 
objects.  The  ideas  of  some  objects  it  certainly  must  have, 
nor  is  it  possible  for  it  without  these  ever  to  arrive  at  any 
conception  of  time ;  which,  since  it  appears  not  as  any  pri- 
mary distinct  impression,  can  plainly  be  nothing  but  dif- 
ferent ideas  or  impressions  or  objects  disposed  in  a  certain 
manner,  i.e.  succeeding  each  other.'  ^ 

261.  In  this  passage  the  equivocation  between  ^impression'  ittamB 
as  feeling,  and  *  impression'  as  conception  of  the  manner  in  iipon  equi- 
which  feelings  occur,  is  less  successfully  disguised  than  lb  the  b^ween 
like  equivocation  in  the  account  of  extension — not  indeed  from  feeling  and 
any  fkilure  in  Hume's  power  of  statement,  but  from  the  of  toiL***"^ 
nature  of  the  case.  In  truth  the  mere  reproduction  of  impres-  tions  be- 
sions  can  as  little  account  for  the  one  conception  as  for  the  SdM. 
other.    Just  as,  in  order  to  account  for  the  *  impression '  from 
which  the  abstract  idea  of  space  may  be  derived,  we  have 
to  suppose  first  that  the  feeling  of  colour,  through  being 
presented  by  the  self-conscious  subject  to  itself,  becomes  a 
coloured  thing,  and  next,  that  this  thing  is  viewed  as  a 
whole  of  parts  limiting  each  other ;  so,  in  order  to  account 
for  the  ^  impression '  from  which  the  idea  of  time  may  be 
abstracted,  we  have  to  suppose  the  presentation  of  the  suc- 
cession of  feelings  to  a  consciousness  not  in  succession,  and 
the  consequent  view  of  such  presented  succession  as  a  sum  of 
numerable  parts.     It  is  a  relation  only  possible  for  a  think- 
ing consciousness — a  relation,  in  Hume's  language,  not  de- 
pending on  the  nature  of  the  impressions  related — ^that  has 
in  each  case  to  be  introduced  into  experience  in  order  to  be 
extracted  from  it  again  by  *  consideration : '  but  there  is  this 
difference,  that  in  one  case  the  relation  is  not  really  between 
feelings  at  all,  but  between  things  or  parts  of  a  thing ;  while  in 
the  other  it  is  just  that  relation  between  feelings,  the  intro- 
duction of  which  excludes  the  possibility  that  any  feeling 
should  be  the  consciousness  of  the  relation.     Thus  to  speak 
of  a  feeling  of  extension  does  not  involve  so  direct  a  contra- 
diction as  to  speak  in  the  same  way  of  time.     The  reader 
gives  Hume  the  benefit  of  a  way  of  IJiinking  which  Hume's 

»  P.  343. 


220  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

own  theory  excludes.    Himself  distinguishing  between  feel- 
ing and  felt  thing,  and  regarding  extension  as  a  relation 
between  parts  of  a  thing,  he  does  not  reflect  that  for  Hume 
there  is  no  such  distinction ;  that  a  ^  feeling  of  extension ' 
means  that  feeling  is  extended,  which  again  means  that  it 
has  co-existent  parts ;  and  that  what  is  thus  said  of  feeling  as 
extended  ia  incompatible  with  what  is  said  of  it  as  feeling. 
But  when  it  comes  to  a  *  feeling  of  time  * — a  feeling  of  the 
successiveness  of  all  feelings — ^the  incompatibility  between 
what  is  said  of  feeling  as  the  object  and  what  is  implied  of 
it  as  the  subject  is  less  easy  to  disguise.    In  like  manner 
because  we  cannot  really  think  of  extension  as  being  that 
which  yet  according  to  Hume  it  is,  it  does  not  strike  us, 
when  he  speaks  of  it  as  coloured  or  of  colour  as  extended,  that 
he  is  making  one  feeling   a   quality  of  another.      But   it 
would  be  otherwise  if  any  specific  feeling  were  taken  as  a 
quality  of  what  is  ostensibly  a  relation  between  all  feelings. 
There  is  thus  no  *  sensible  quality '  with  which  time  can  be 
said  to  be  *  endowed,'  as  extension  with  *  colour  and  solidity;* 
none  that  can  be  made  to  do  the  same  duty  in  regard  to  it 
as  these  do  in  regard  to  extension,  *  giving  the  idea  *  of  it 
without  actually  being  it. 
He  fails  to       262.  Hence,  as  the  passage  last  quoted  shows,  in  the  case 
hnpfession  ^^  ^^^^  ^'^^  alternative  between  ascribing  it  to  a  sixth  sense, 
or  com-       and  confessing  that  it  is  not  an  impression  at  all,  is  very  hard 
Fm"res-°^     to  avoid.     It  would  seem  that  there  is  an  impression  of  *  the 
Bions  from  manner  in  which  impressions  appear  to  the  mind,'  which  yet 
which  idea  jg  ^q  « distinct  impression.'    What,  then,  is  it  ?   It  cannot  be 

of  time  If  i..i.  .  /»  i.ii  ..  -Ill 

copied.  any  one  of  the  impressions  of  sense,  for  then  it  would  be  a 
distinct  impression.  It  cannot  be  a  *  compound  impression,* 
for  such  composition  is  incompatible  with  that  successiveness 
of  all  feelings  to  each  other  which  is  the  object  of  the  sup- 
posed impression.  It  cannot  be  any  *  new  original  impression' 
arising  from  the  contemplation  of  other  impressions,  for  then, 
according  to  Hume,  it  would  be  ^  an  affection  or  emotion.' 
But  after  the  exclusion  of  impressions  of  sense,  compound 
impressions,  and  impressions  of  reflection,  Hume's  inventory 
of  the  possible  sources  of  ideas  is  exhausted.  To  have  been 
consistent,  he  ought  to  have  dealt  with  the  relation  of  time 
as  he  afterwards  does  with  that  of  cause  and  effect,  and,  in 
default  of  an  impression  from  which  it  could  be  derived,  have 
reduced  it  to  a  figure  of  speech.     But  since  the  possibility 


WHAT  BECOMES  OF  BfATHEMATICS  ?  221 

of  accounting  for  the  propensities  to  feign,  whicH  onr  Ian- 
gaage  about  cause  and  effect  according  to  him  represents, 
required  the  consciousness  of  relation  in  time,  this  course 
could  not  be  taken.  Accordingly  after  the  possibility  of  time 
being  an  impression  has  been  excluded  as  plainly  as  it  can 
be  by  anything  short  of  a  direct  negation,  by  a  device  singu- 
larly na^  it  is  made  to  appear  as  an  impression  afber  all. 
On  being  told  that  the  consciousness  of  time  is  not  a  '  new 
original  impression  of  reflection,'  since  in  that  case  it  would 
be  an  emotion  or  affection,  but  ^  tyidy  the  notice  which  the 
mind  takes  of  the  manner  in  which  impressions  appear  to  it,' 
the  reader  must  be  supposed  to  forget  the  previous  admission 
that  it  is  no  distinct  impression  at  all,  and  to  interpret  this 
'notice  which  the  mind  takes,'  because  it  is  not  an  im- 
pression of  reflection,  as  an  impression  of  sense.  To  make 
such  interpretation  easier,  the  account  given  of  time  earlier 
in  the  paragraph  quoted  is  judiciously  altered  at  its  close,  so 
that  instead  of  having  to  ascribe  to  feeling  a  consciousness 
of '  the  manner  in  which  impressions  appear  to  the  mind,' 
we  have  only  to  ascribe  to  it  the  impressions  so  appearing. 
But  this  alteration  admitted,  what  becomes  of  the  ^  abstract- 
ness '  of  the  idea  of  time,  i.e.  of  the  possibility  of  its  being 
'  conjoined  with  any  objects'  indifferently?  It  is  the  essential 
condition  of  such  indifferent  conjunction,  as  Hume  puts  it, 
that  time  should  be  only  the  manner  of  appearance  as  dis- 
tinct from  the  impressions  themselves.  If  time  is  the  im- 
pressions, it  must  have  the  specific  sensuous  character  which 
belongs  to  these.  It  must  be  a  multitude  of  sounds,  a  multi- 
tude of  tastes,  a  multitude  of  smells — ^these  one  after  the 
other  in  endless  series.  How  then  can  such  a  series  of  im- 
pressions become  such  an  idea,  i.e.  so  grow  fainter  as  to  be 
*  conjoined '  indifferently  *  with  any  impressions  whatever '  ? 

263.  The  case  then  between  Hume  and  the  conceptions  How  md 
which  the  exact  sciences  presuppose,  as  we  have  so  far  ex-  ^  adjust 
amined  it,  stands  thus.     Of  the  idea  of  quantity,  as  such,  he  ^^ences^to 
gives  no  account  whatever.    We  are  told,  indeed,  that  there  his  theory 
are  'unites  which  can  exist  alone,'  i.e.  can  be  felt  separately,  ^l^^p 
and  which  are  indivisible ;  but  how  such  unites,  being  sepa- 
rate impressions,  can  form  a  sum  or  number,  or  what  mean^ 
ing  a  unite  can  have  except  as  one  of  a  number — how  again 
a  sum  formed  of  separate  unites  can  be  a  continuous  whole  or 
magnitude — we  are  not  told  at  alL    Of  the  ideas  of  space 


222  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION, 

and  time  we  do  find  an  account.  They  are  said  to  be  given  m 
impressionsy  but,  to  justify  this  account  of  them,  each  im- 
pression has  to  be  taken  to  be  at  the  same  time  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  manner  of  its  own  existence,  as  determined 
by  relation  to  other  impressions  not  felt  along  with  it  and  as 
interpreted  in  a  way  that  presupposes  the  unexplained  idea 
of  quantity.  With  this  supposed  origin  of  the  ideas  the 
sciences  resting  on  them  have  to  be  adjusted.  They  may 
take  the  relations  of  number  and  magnitude,  time  and  space, 
for  granted,  as  *  qualities  of  perceptions,'  and  no  question  will 
be  asked  as  to  how  the  perceptions  come  to  assume  qualities 
confessed  to  be  *  independent  of  their  own  nature.'  It  is  only 
when  they  treat  them  in  a  way  incompatible  not  merely  with 
their  being  feelings — that  must  always  be  the  case — ^but  with 
their  being  relations  between  felt  things,  that  they  are  sup- 
posed to  cross  the  line  which  separates  experimental  know- 
ledge firom  metaphysical  jargon.  So  long  then  as  space  is 
considered  merely  as  the  relation  of  externality  between  ob- 
jects of  the  *  outer,'  time  as  that  of  succession  between  ob- 
jects of  the  '  inner,'  sense — in  other  words,  so  long  as  they 
remain  what  they  are  to  the  earliest  self-consciousness  and 
do  not  become  the  subject  matter  of  any  science  of  quantity — 
if  we  sink  the  difference  between  feelings  and  relations  of 
felt  things,  and  ask  no  questions  about  the  origin  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  outer  and  inner  sense,  they  may  be  taken 
as  data  of  sensitive  experience.  It  is  otherwise  when  they 
are  treated  as  quantities,  and  it  is  their  susceptibility  of  being 
so  treated  that,  rightly  understood,  brings  out  their  true 
character  as  the  intelligible  element  in  sensitive  experience. 
But  Hume  contrives  at  once  to  treat  them  as  quantities, 
thus  seeming  to  give  the  exact  sciences  their  due,  and  yet  to 
appeal  to  their  supposed  origin  in  sense  as  evidence  of  their 
not  having  properties  which,  if  they  are  quantities,  they  cer- 
tainly must  have.  Having  thus  seemingly  disposed  of  the 
purely  intelligible  character  of  quantity  in  its  application  to 
space  and  time,  he  can  more  safely  ignore  what  he  could  not 
so  plausibly  dispose  of— its  pure  intelligibility  as  number. 
In  order  ^^^*  ^^  Condition  of  such  a  method  being  acquiesced  in 

to  seem  to  is,  that  quantity  in  all  its  forms  should  be  found  reducible  to 
murt 'get  tdtimate  unites  or  indivisible  parts  in  the  shape  of  separate 
rid  of  'In-  impressions.  Should  it  be  found  so,  the  whole  question 
8U)fi?ty.*^'  i^^d^d,  how  ideas  of  relation  axe  possible  for  a  merely  feeling 


INFINITE  DIVISIBILITY.  238 

consciousness,  would  sidll  remain,  but  mathematics  would 
stand  on  the. same  footing  with  the  experimental  sciences,  as 
a  science  of  relations  between  impressions.  Upon  this  redu- 
ctibility, then,  we  find  Hume  constantly  insisting.  In  regard 
to  number  indeed  he  could  not  ignore  the  fact  that  the 
science  which  deals  with  it  recognizes  no  ultimate  unite,  but 
only  such  a  one  as  ^  is  itself  a  true  number.'  But  he  passes 
lightly  over  this  difficulty  with  the  remark  that  the  divisible 
unite  of  actual  arithmetic  is  a  *  fictitious  denomination ' — 
leaving  his  reader  to  guess  how  the  fiction  can  be  possible  if 
the  real  unite  is  a  separate  indivisible  impression — and  pro- 
ceeds with  the  more  hopeful  task  of  resolving  space  into  such 
impressions.  He  is  well  aware  that  the  constitution  of  space 
by  impressions  and  its  constitution  by  indivisible  parts  stand 
or  faU  together.  K  space  is  a  compound  impression,  it  is 
made  up  of  indivisible  parts,  for  there  is  a  *  minimum  visibile ' 
and  by  consequence  a  minimum  of  imagination ;  and  con- 
versely, if  its  parts  are  indivisible,  they  can  be  nothing  but 
impressions ;  for,  being  indivisible,  they  cannot  be  extended, 
and,  not  being  extended,  they  must  be  either  simple  impres- 
sions or  nothing.  With  that  instinct  of  literary  strategy 
which  never  fails  him,  Hume  feels  that  the  case  against 
infinite  divisibility,  from  its  apparent  implication  of  an  in- 
finite capacity  in  the  mind,  is  more  effective  than  that  in 
&vour  of  space  being  a  compound  impression,  and  accordingly 
puts  tiiat  to  the  front  in  the  Second  Part  of  the  Treatise, 
in  order,  having  found  credit  for  establishing  it,  to  argue 
back  to  the  constitution  of  space  by  impressions.  In  fact, 
however,  it  is  on  the  supposed  composition  of  all  quantity 
from  separate  impressions  that  his  argument  against  its 
infinite  divisibility  rests. 

265.  The  essence  of  his  doctrine  is  contained  in  the  fol-  Quantity 
lowing  passages :  *  'Tis  certain  that  the  imagination  reaches  ™?^«  ^9 
a  mimmiMfny  and  may  raise  up  to  itself  an  idea,  of  which  it  bioi^,  and 
cannot  conceive  any  subdivision,  and  which  cannot  be  dimi-  there  muit 
nished  without  a  total  annihilation.     When  you  teU  me  of  poJJibie 
the  thousandth  and  ten  thousandth  part  of  a  grain  of  sand,  £  impres- 
have  a  distinct  idea  of  these  numbers  and  of  their  several  ®^^"* 
proportions,  but  the  images  which  I  form  in  my  mind  to 
represent  the  things  themselves  are  nothing  different  from 
each  other  nor  inferior  to  that  image  by  which  I  repi'esent 
the  grain  of  sand  itself,  which  is   supposed   so   vastly  to 


224 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Yet  it  18 
admitted 
that  there 
is  an  idea 
of  number 
not  made 
up  of  im- 
pressions. 


exceed  them*  What  consists  of  parts  is  disting^hable  into 
them,  and  what  is  distinguishable  is  sepfiar^ble.  But  what- 
ever we  maj  imagine  of  the  thing,  the  idea  of  a  grain  of 
sand  is  not  distinguishable  nor  separable  into  twenty,  much 
less  into  a  thousand,  ten  thousand,  or  an  infinite  number  of 
different  ideas.  'Tis  the  same  case  with  the  impressions  of 
the  senses  as  with  the  ideas  of  the  imagination.  Put  a  spot 
of  ink  upon  paper,  fix  your  eye  upon  that  spot,  and  retire  to 
such  a  distance  that  at  last  you  lose  sight  of  it ;  'tis  plain 
that  the  moment  before  it  vanished  the  image  or  impression 
was  perfectly  indivisible.  *Tis  not  for  want  of  rays  of  light 
striking  on  our  eyes  that  the  minute  parts  of  distant  bodies 
convey  not  any  sensible  impression ;  but  because  they  are 
removed  beyond  that  distance  at  which  their  impressions 
were  reduced  to  a  minimumj  and  were  incapable  of  any 
further  diminution.  A  microscope  or  telescope,  which 
renders  them  visible,  produces  not  any  new  rays  of  light,  but 
only  spreads  those  which  always  flowed  from  them ;  and  by 
that  means  both  gives  parts  to  impressions,  which  to  the 
naked  eye  appear  simple  and  uncompounded,  and  advances  to 
a  minimum  what  was  formerly  imperceptible.' '      (Part  ii. 

§1.) 

266.  In  this  passage  it  will  be  seen  that  Hume  virtually 
yields  the  point  as  regards  number.  When  he  is  told  of  the 
thousandth  or  ten  thousandth  part  of  a  grain  of  sand  he  has 
^  a  distinct  idea  of  these  numbers  and  of  their  different  pro- 
portions,' though  to  this  idea  no  distinct  'image'  cor- 
responds ;  in  other  words,  though  the  idea  is  not  a  copy  of 
any  impression.  It  is  of  such  parts  cls  parts  of  the  grain  of 
samd — as  parts  of  a  *  compound  impression ' — ^that  he  can  form 
no  idea,  and  for  the  reason  given  in  the  sequel,  that  they  are 
less  than  any  possible  impression,  less  than  the  '  minimum 
visibile.'  This,  it  would  seem,  is  a  fixed  quantity.  That 
which  is  the  least  possible  impression  once  is  so  always. 
Telescopes  and  microscopes  do  not  alter  it,  but  present  it 
under  conditions  under  which  it  could  not  be  presented  to 
the  naked  eye.  Their  effect,  according  to  Hume,  could  not 
be  to  render  that  visible  which  existed  unseen  before,  nor  to 
reveal  parts  in  that  which  previously  had,  though  it  seemed 
not  to  have,  them — that  would  imply  that  an  impression  was 
^  an  image  of  something  distinct  and  external ' — but  either  to 

>  P.  S86. 


DIVISION  INTO  mPRESSIONS.  285 

present  a  simple  impression  of  sight  where  previously  there 
was  none  or  to  substitute  a  compound  impression  for  one 
that  was  simple.^    It  is  then  because  all  divisibility  is  sup- 
posed to  be  into  impressions,  i.e.  into  feelings,  and  because 
there  are  conditions  under  which  every  feeling  disappears, 
that  an  infinite  divisibility  is  pronounced  impossible.     But  A  flmte 
the  question  is  whether  a  finite  divisibility  into  feelings  is  not  ixlto^lnT- 
just  as  impossible  as  an  infinite  one.    Just  as  for  the  reasons  pressions 
stated  above*  a  'compound  feeling*  is  impossible,  so  is  the  ™"Jie 
division  of  a  compound  into  feelings.     Undoubtedly  if  the  than  an  in- 

*  minimum  visibile  *  were  a  feeling  it  would  not  be  divisible,  ^^^  ®"*' 
but  for  the  same  reason  it  would  not  be  a  quantity.     But  if 

it  is  not  a  quantity,  with  what  meaning  is  it  called  a  minimum, 
and  how  can  a  quantity  be  supposed  to  be  made  up  of  such 
'visibilia'  as  have  themselves  no  quantity?  In  truth  the 
'  minimum  visibile '  is  not  a  feeling  at  aU  but  a  felt  thing, 
conceived  under  attributes  of  quantity ;  in  particular,  as  the 
term  *  minimum  *  implies,  under  a  relation  of  proportion  to 
other  quantities  of  which,  if  expressed  numerically,  Hume 
himself,  according  to  the  admission  above  noticed,  would  have 
to  confess  there  was  an  idea  which  was  an  image  of  no  im- 
pression. That  which  thought  thus  presents  to  itself  as  a 
thing  doubtless  has  been  a  feeling ;  but,  as  thus  presented,  it 
is  already  other  than  and  independent  of  feeling.  With  a 
step  backward  or  a  turn  of  the  head,  the  feeling  may  cease, 

*  the  spot  of  ink  may  vanish ; '  but  the  thing  does  not  there- 
fore cease  to  be  a  thing  or  to  have  quantity,  which  implies 
the  possibility  of  continuous  division. 

267.  It  is  thus  the  confusion  between  feeling  and  concep-  in  Hume's 
tion  that  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  difficulty  about  divisibmty.  '^"f^^ 
For  a  consciousness   formed  merely  by  the  succession  of  really  a 
feelings,  as  there  would  be  no  thing  at  all,  so  there  would  be  ^^jjj^jj!^^] 
no  parts  of  a  thing — no  addibility  or  divisibility.   But  Hume  thing,  that 
is  forced  by  the  exigencies  of  his  theory  to  hold  together,  as  appears  as 
best  he  may,  the  reduction  of  all  consciousness  to  feeling  diilJi^ibie. 
and  the  existence  for  it  of  divisible  objects.    The   conse- 
quence is   his   supposition  of  'compound   impressions'  or 
feelings  having  paxts,  divisible  into  separate  impressions 

'  It  wiU  be  noticed  that  in  the  last      telescope  or  microscope  as  representing 
sentence  of  the  passage  quoted,  Hnme      something  other  than  itself,  which  pre- 
assumes  the  convenient   privilege    of      yiously  existed,  though  it  was  impoi- 
'  speaking  with  the  vulgar,*  and  treats      ceptible. 
the  'minimum  visibile'  presented  by  '  See  above,  §§241  &  246. 

VOL,  I.  Q 


•J28  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

but  divisible  no  fnrther  when  these  separate  impressions 
have  been  reached.  We  find,  however,  that  in  all  the  in- 
stances he  gives  it  is  not  really  a  feeling  that  is  divided  into 
feelings,  but  a  thing  into  other  things*  It  is  the  heap  of 
sand,  for  instance,  that  is  divided  into  grains,  not  the  feeling 
which,  by  intellectual  interpretation,  represents  to  me  a 
heap  of  sand  that  is  divided  into  lesser  feelings.  I  may 
feel  the  heap  and  feel  the  grain,  but  it  is  not  a  feeling  that 
is  the  heap  nor  a  feeling  that  is  the  grain.  Hume  would 
not  oflend  common  sense  by  saying  that  it  was  so,  but  his 
theory  really  required  that  he  should,  for  the  supposition 
that  the  grain  is  no  further  divisible  when  there  are  no 
separate  impressions  into  which  it  may  be  divided,  implies 
that  in  that  case  it  is  itself  a  separate  impression,  even  as  the 
heap  is  a  compound  one.  But  what  difference,  it  may  be 
asked,  does  it  make  to  say  that  the  heap  and  the  grain  are 
not  feelings,  but  things  conceived  of,  if  it  is  admitted,  as 
since  Berkeley  it  must  be,  that  the  thing  is  nothing  outside 
or  independent  of  consciousness  9  Do  we  not  by  such  a  state- 
ment merely  change  names  and  invite  the  question  how  a 
thought  can  have  parts,  in  place  of  the  question  how  a 
feeling  can  have  them  ? 
Upon  tme  268.  If  thought  were  no  more  than  Hume  takes  feeling  to 
notion  of  1^^^  ^his  objection  would  be  valid.  But  if  by  thought  we 
?nanite^  Understand  the  self-conscious  principle  which,  present  to 
divisibility  all  feelings,  forms  out  of  them  a  world  of  mutually  related 
couwe!  ^  objects,  permanent  with  its  own  permanence,  we  shall  also 
understand  that  the  relations  by  which  thought  qualifies  its 
object  are  not  qualities  of  itself — ^that,  in  blinking  of  its 
object  as  made  up  of  parts,  it  does  not  become  itself  a 
quantum.  We  shall  also  be  on  the  way  to  understand  how 
thought,  detaching  that  relation  of  simple  distinctness  by 
which  it  has  qualified  its  objects,  finds  before  it  a  multitude 
of  units  of  which  each,  as  combining  in  itself  distinctions 
from  all  the  other  units,  is  at  the  same  time  itself  a  multi- 
tude ;  in  other  words,  finds  a  quantum  of  which  each  part, 
being  the  same  in  kind  with  the  whole  and  all  other  parts, 
is  also  a  quantum ;  i.e.  which  is  infinitely  divisible.  YH^en 
once  it  is  understood,  in  short,  that  quantity  is  simply  the 
most  elementary  of  the  relations  by  which  thought  consti- 
tutes the  real  world,  as  detached  from  this  world  and  pre- 
sented by  thought  to  itself  as  a  separate  object,  then  infinite 


NATURE  OF  MATHEMATICAL  POINTS.  «7 

diyisibilifcj  becomes  a  matter  of  course.  It  is  real  just  in  so 
for  as  quantity,  of  which  it  is  a  necessary  attribute,  is  real* 
If  quantity,  though  not  feeling,  is  yet  real,  that  its  parts 
should  not  be  feelings  can  be  nothing  against  their  reality. 
This  once  admitted,  the  objections  to  infinite  divisibility 
disappear;  but  so  likewise  does  that  mysterioas  dignity 
supposed  to  attach  to  it,  or  to  its  correlative,  the  infinitely 
addible,  as  implying  an  infinite  capacity  in  the  mind.  From 
Hume's  point  of  view,  the  mind  being  '  a  bundle  of  impres- 
sions ' — though  how  impressions,  being  successive,  should  form 
a  bundle  is  not  explained — its  capacity  must  mean  the  number 
of  its  impressions,  and,  aU  divisibility  being  into  impressions, 
it  follows  that  infinite  divisibility  means  an  infinite  capacity 
in  the  mind.  This  notion  however  arises,  as  we  have 
shown,  firom  a  confusion  between  a  fdt  division  of  an  im- 
possible *•  compound  feeling,'  and  that  conceived  divisibility 
of  an  object  which  constitutes  but  a  single  attribute  of  the 
object  and  represents  a  single  relation  of  the  mind  towards 
it.  There  may  be  a  sense  in  which  all  conception  im 
plies  infinity  in  the  conceiving  mind,  but  so  far  from  thib 
doing  so  in  any  special  way,  it  arises,  as  we  have  seen,  from 
the  presentation  of  objects  under  that  very  condition  of 
endless,  unremoved,  distinction  which  constitutes  the  true 
limitation  of  our  thought. 

269.  When,  as  with  Hume,  it  is  only  in  its  application  to  what  are 
space  and  time  that  the  question  of  infinite  divisibility  is  '^*l^^^*' 
treated,  its  true  nature  is  more  easily  disguised,  for  the  mentsof 
reason  already  indicated,  that  space  and  time  are  not  neces-  extension  f 
sarily  considered  as  quanta.    When  Hume,  indeed,  speaks  toDded!^' 
of  space  as  a  *  composition  of  parts '  or  *  made  up  of  points,*  what  are 
he  is  of  course  treating  it  as  a  quantum ;  but  we  shall  find  ^  ^^ 
that  in  seeking  to  avoid  the  necessary  consequence  of  its 
being  a  quantum — ^the  consequence,  namely,  that  it  is  in- 
finitdiy  divisible — ^he  can  take  advantage  of  the  possibility  of 
treating  it  as  the  simple,  unquantified,  relation  of  externality. 
We  have  already  spoken  of  the  dexterity  with  which,  having 
shown  that  all  divisibility,  because  into  impressions,  is  into 
simple  parts,  he  turns  this  into  an  argument  in  favour  of  the 
composition  of  space  by  impressions.     ^  Our  idea  of  space  is 
compounded  of  parts  which  are  iiidivisible.'     Let  us  take 
one  of  these  parts,  then,  and  ask  what  sort  of  idea  it  is :  4et  us 
form  a  judgment  of  its  nature  and  qualities.'     ^'Tis  plain  it 

Q  2 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


GolouTB  or 
coloured 
pointB? 
What  18 
the  dif- 
ference ? 


True  way 
of  dealing 
with  the 
question. 


ifl  not  an  idea  of  extension :  for  the  idea  of  extension  con- 
sists of  parts ;  and  this  idea,  according  to  the  supposition, 
is  perfectly  simple  and  indivisible.  Is  it  therefore  nothing? 
That  is  impossible,' for  it  would  imply  that  a  real  idea  was 
composed  of  nonentities.  The  way  out  of  the  difficulty  is 
to  ^  endow  the  simple  parts  with  colour  and  solidity.'  In 
words  already  quoted,  'that  compound  impression,  which 
represents  extension,  consists  of  several  lesser  impressions, 
that  are  indivisible  to  the  eye  or  feeling,  and  may  be  called 
impressions  of  atoms  or  corpuscles  endowed  vdth  colour  and 
solidity.'     (Partii.  §  3,  near  the  end.) 

270.  It  is  very  plain  that  in  this  passage  Hume  is  riding 
two  horses  at  once.  He  is  trying  so  to  combine  the  notion 
of  the  constitution  of  space  by  impressions  with  that  of  its 
constitution  by  points,  as  to  disguise  the  real  meaning  of 
each.  In  what  lies  the  difference  between  the  feelings  of 
colour,  of  which  we  have  shown  that  they  cannot  without 
contradiction  be  supposed  to  'make  up  extension,'  and 
*  coloured  points  or  corpuscles '  9  Unless  the  points,  as 
points,  mean  something,  the  substitution  of  coloured  points 
for  colours  means  nothing.  But  according  to  Hume  the 
point  is  nothing  except  as  an  impression  of  sight  or  touch. 
If  then  we  refuse  his  words  the  benefit  of  an  interpretation 
which  his  doctrine  excludes,  we  find  that  there  remains 
simply  the  impossible  supposition  that  space  consists  of 
feelings.  This  result  cannot  be  avoided,  unless  in  speaking 
of  space  as  composed  of  points,  we  understand  by  the  point 
that  which  is  definitely  other  than  an  impression.  Thus 
the  question  which  Hume  puts — If  extension  is  made  up  of 
parts,  and  these,  being  indivisible,  are  unextended,  what  are 
they  P — really  remains  untouched  by  his  ostensible  answer. 
Such  a  question  indeed  to  a  philosophy  like  Locke's,  which, 
ignoring  the  constitution  of  reality  by  relations,  supposed  real 
things  to  be  first  found  and  then  relations  to  be  superinduced 
by  the  mind — much  more  to  one  like  Hume's,  which  left  no 
mind  to  superinduce  them — was  necessarily  unanswerable. 

271.  In  truth,  extension  is  the  relation  of  mutual  exter- 
nality. The  constituents  of  this  relation  have  not,  as  such, 
any  nature  but  what  is  given  by  the  relation.  If  in  Hume's 
language  we  '  separate  each  from  the  others  and,  considering 
it  apart,  from  a  judgment  of  its  nature  and  qualities,'  by  the 
very  way  we  put  the  problem  we  render  it  insoluble  or,  more 


HAS  A  POINT  QUANTITY?  229 

properly,  destroy  it ;  for,  thus  separated,  they  have  no  nature. 
It  is  this  that  we  express  by  tiie  proposition  which  would 
otherwise  be  tautx)logical,  that  extension  is  a  relation  between 
extended  points.  The  *  points '  are  the  simplest  expression 
for  those  coefficients  to  the  relation  of  mutual  externality, 
which,  as  determined  by  that  relation  and  no  otherwise,  have 
themselves  the  attribute  of  being  extended  and  that  only. 
If  it  is  asked  whether  the  points,  being  extended,  are  there- 
fore divisible,  the  answer  must  be  twofold.  Separately  they 
are  not  divisible,  for  separately  they  are  nothing.  Whether, 
as  determined  by  mutual  relation,  they  are  divisible  or  no, 
depends  on  whether  they  are  treated  as  forming  a  quantum 
or  no.  If  they  are  not  so  treated,  we  cannot  with  propriety 
pronounce  them  to  be  either  further  divisible  or  not  so,  for 
the  question  of  divisibility  has  no  application  to  them.  But 
being  perfectly  homogeneous  with  each  other  and  with  that 
which  together  they  constitute,  they  are  susceptible  of  l)eing 
so  treated,  and  a/re  so  treated  when,  with  Hume  in  the  passage 
before  us,  we  speak  of  them  as  the  parts  of  which  extended 
matter  consists.  Thus  considered  as  parts  of  a  quantum  and 
therefore  themselves  quanta,  the  infinite  divisibility  which 
belongs  to  all  quantity  belongs  also  to  them. 

272.  In  this  lies  the  answer   to  the    most  really  cogent  *  If  the 
argument  which  Hume   offers  against  infinite  divisibility.  J^^g^jJe^" 
^  A  surface  terminates  a  solid ;   a  line  terminates  a  surface ;  it  would' 
a  point  terminates  a  line  ;  but  I  assert  that  if  the  ideas  of  a  ^.  °^.^^ 
point,  line,  or  surface  were  not  indivisible,  'tis  impossible  we  of  a  line.' 
should  ever  conceive  these  terminations.    For  let  these  ideas  -A-nswer  to 
be  supposed  infinitely  divisible,  and  then  let  the  fancy  en- 
deavour to  fix  itself  on  the  idea  of  the  last  surface,  line,  or 
point,  it  immediately  finds  this  idea  to  break  into  parts ;  and 
upon  its  seizing  the  last  of  these  parts  it  loses  its  hold  by  a 
new  division,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum^  without  any  possibility 
of  its  arriving  at  a  concluding  idea.' '     If  *  point,'  *  line,'  or 
'  surface'  were  really  names  for '  ideas '  either  in  Hume's  sense, 
as  feelings  grown  fainter,  or  in  Locke's,  as  definite  imprints 
made  by  outward  things,  this  passage  would  be  perplexing. 
In  truth  they  represent  objecte  determined  by  certain  con- 
ceived relations,  and  the  relation  under  which  the  object  is 
considered  may  vary  without  a  corresponding  variation  in 
the  name.     When  a  *  point'  is  considered  simply  as  the 

»  P.  345. 


230  GENERAL  mTRODUCTION. 

'  termination  of  a  line/  it  is  not  considered  as  a  quantnm* 
It  represents  the  abstraction  of  the  relation  of  externality,  as 
existing  between  two  lines.  It  is  these  lines,  not  the  point, 
that  in  this  case  are  the  constituents  of  the  relation,  and 
thus  it  is  they  alone  that  are  for  the  time  considered  as  ex- 
tended, therefore  as  quanta,  therefore  as  divisible.  So  when 
the  line  in  turn  is  considered  as  the  ^  termination  of  a  sur- 
face.' It  then  represents  the  relation  of  externality  as  between 
surfaces^  and  for  the  time  it  is  the  surfaces,  not  the  line,  that 
are  considered  to  have  extension  and  its  consequences.  The 
same  applies  to  the  view  of  a  surfex^e  as  the  termination  of  a 
solid.  Just  as  the  line,  though  not  a  quantum  when  con- 
sidered simply  as  a  relation  between  surfaces,  becomes  so  when 
considered  in  relation  to  another  line,  so  the  point,  though  it 
'  has  no  magnitude '  when  considered  as  the  termination  of 
a  line,  yet  acquires  parts,  or  becomes  divisible,  so  soon  as  it 
is  considered  in  relation  to  other  points  as  a  constituent  of 
extended  matter ;  and  it  is  thus  that  Hume  considers  it, 
iKi)v  fj  ajctovy  when  he  talks  of  extension  as  'made  up  of 
coloured  points.* 
What  be-  278.  It  is  the  necessity  then,  according  to  his  theory,  of 
«)me8of  making  space  an  impression  that  throughout  underlies 
uesB  of  Hume's  argument  against  its  infinite  divisibility ;  and,  as  we 
mathe-  have  seen,  the  same  theory  which  excludes  its  infinite  divisi- 
copding  to  bility  logically  extinguishes  it  as  a  quantity,  divisible  and 
Hume?  measurable,  altogether.  He  of  course  does  not  recognize  this 
consequence.  He  is  obliged  indeed  to  admit  that  in  regard 
to  the  proportions  of  *  greater,  equal  and  less,'  and  the  rela- 
tions of  different  parts  of  space  to  each  other,  no  judgments 
of  universality  or  exactness  are  possible.  We  may  judge  of 
them,  however,  he  holds,  with  various  approximations  to 
exactness,  whereas  upon  the  supposition  of  infinite  divisibility, 
as  he  ingeniously  makes  out,  we  could  not  judge  of  them  at 
all.  He  '  asks  the  mathematicians,  what  they  mean  when 
they  say  that  one  line  or  surface  is  equal  to,  or  greater  or 
less  than,  another.'  If  they  *  maintain  the  composition  of 
extension  by  indivisible  points,'  their  answer,  he  supposes, 
will  be  that  *  lines  or  surfaces  are  equal  when  the  numbers  of 
points  in  each  are  equal.'  This  answer  he  reckons  'just;' 
but  the  standard  of  equality  given  is  entirely  useless.  *  For 
as  the  points  which  enter  into  the  composition  of  any  line  or 
surface,  whether  perceived  by  the  sight  or  touch,  are  so 


NATURE  OF  MATHEMATICAL  CERTAINTY.  231 

minute  and  so  confounded  with  each  other  that  'tis  utterly 
impossible  for  the  mind  to  compute  their  number,  such  a 
computation  will  never  afford  us  a  standard  by  which  we 
may  judge  of  proportions/  The  opposite  sect  of  mathema- 
ticians, however,  ai^e  in  worse  case,  having  no  standard  of 
equality  whatever  to  assign.  '  For  since,  according  to  their 
hypothesis,  the  least  as  weU  as  greatest  figures  contain  an 
infinite  number  of  parts,  and  since  infinite  numbers,  properly 
speaking,  can  neither  be  equal  nor  unequal  with  respect  to 
each  other,  the  equality  or  inequality  of  any  portion  of  space 
can  never  depend  on  any  proportion  in  the  number  of  their 
parts.'  His  own  doctrine  is  *that  the  only  useful  notion  of 
equality  or  inequality  is  derived  from  the  whole  united 
appearance,  and  the  comparison  of,  particular  objects.'  The 
judgments  thus  derived  are  in  many  cases  certain  and  in- 
fallible. ^  When  the  measure  jof  a  yard  and  that  of  a  foot  are 
presented,  the  mind  can  no  more  question  that  the  first  is 
longer  than  the  second  than  it  can  doubt  of  those  principles 
wliich  are  most  clear  and  self-evident.'  Such  judgments, 
however,  though  *  sometimes  infallible,  are  not  always  so.' 
Upon  a  *  review  and  reflection '  we  often  *  pronounce  those 
objects  equal  which  at  first  we  esteemed  unequal,'  and  vice 
versd.  Often  also  *  we  discover  our  error  by  a  juxtaposition 
of  the  objects ;  or,  where  that  is  impracticable,  by  the  use  of 
some  common  and  invariable  measure  which,  being  succes- 
sively applied  to  each,  informs  us  of  their  different  propor- 
tions. And  even  this  correction  is  susceptible  of  a  new 
correction^  and  of  different  degrees  of  exactness,  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  instrument  by  which  we  measure  the 
bodies,  and  the  care  which  we  employ  in  the  comparison.' 
(Pp.  351-63.) 

274.  Such  indefinite  approach  to   exactness  is  all  that  Theuni- 
Hume  can  allow  to  the  mathematician.  But  it  is  undoubtedly  I^"^^]^^®" 
another  and  an  absolute  sort  of  exactness  that  the  mathema-  of  goo- 
tician  himself  supposes  when  he  pronounces  all  right  angles  ™®^  ^^^ 
equal.     Such  perfect  equality  *  beyond  what  we  have  instru-  true  or  im- 
ments  and  art'  to  ascertain,  Hume  boldly  calls  a  *mere  '"ca'^'ng- 
fiction  of  the  mind,  useless  as  well  as  incomprehensible.'* 
Thus  when  the  mathematician  talks  of  certain  angles  as 
always  equal,  of  certain  lines  as  never  meeting,  he  is  either 

*  P.  858. 


383  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

making  statements  that  are  untrue  or  speaking  of  nonenti- 
ties. If  his  '  lines  *  and  '  angles '  mean  ideas  that  we  can 
possibly  have,  his  universal  propositions  are  untrue ;  if  they 
do  not,  according  to  Hume  they  can  mean  nothing.  He 
says,  for  instance,  that '  two  right  lines  cannot  have  a  com- 
mon segment ; '  but  of  su'ch  ideas  of  right  lines  as  we  can 
possibly  have  this  is  only  true  ^  where  the  right  lines  incline 
upon  each  other  with  a  sensible  angle.' ^  It  is  not  true 
when  they  '  approach  at  the  rate  of  an  inch  in  20  leagues.' 
According  to  the  *  original  standard  of  aright  line,'  which  is 
*  nothing  but  a  certain  general  appearance,  'tis  evident  right 
lines  may  be  made  to  concur  with  each  other.' ^  Any  other 
standard  is  a  ^  useless  and  incomprehensible  fiction.'  Strictly 
speaking,  according  to  Hume,  we  have  it  not,  but  only  a 
tendency  to  suppose  that  we  have  it  arising  from  the  pro- 
gressive correction  of  our  actual  measurements.' 
Distine-  275.  Now  it  is  obvious  that  what  Hume  accounts  for  by 

twMn*"       means  of  this  tendency  to  feign,  even  if  the  tendency  did  not 
Hume's       prcsupposc  conditious  incompatible  with  his  theory,  is  not 
andtimtof  mathematical  science  as  it  exists.    It  has  even  less  appear- 
the  hypo-    ancc  of  being  so  than  (to  anticipate)  has  that  which  is  ac- 
Mt^  of    ^^"^^^  *^^  ^y  those  propensities  to  feign,  which  he  sub- 
mathe-        stitutes  for  the  ideas  of   cause  and  substance,  of  being 
matics.       natural  science  as  it  exists.    In  the  latter  case,  when  the 
idea  of  necessary  connexion  has  been  disposed  of,  an  im- 
pression of  reflection  can  with  some  plausibility  be  made  to 
do  duty  instead ;  but  there  is  no  impression  of  reflection  in 
Hume's  sense  of  the  word,  no  *  propensity,'  that  can  be  the 
subject  of  mathematical  reasoning.    He  speaks,  indeed,  of 
our  supposing  some  imaginaiy  standard — of  our  having  *  an 
obscure  and  implicit  nofcion  ' — of  perfect  equality,  but  such 
language  is  only  a  way  of  saving  appearances ;  for  according 
to  him,  a  *  supposition  *  or  *  notion '  which  is  neither   im- 
pression nor  idea,  cannot  be  anything.     A  hasty  reader, 
catching  at  the  term  '  supposition,'  may  find  his  statement 
plausible  with  all  the  plausibilityof  the  modem  doctrine,  which 
accounts  for  the  universality  and  exactness  of  mathematical 
truths  as  *  hypothetical ' — the  doctrine  that  we  suppose  figures 
exactly  corresponding  to  our   definitions,  though  such  do 

1  Of.  Aristotle,  MeUph,  998  a,  on  a      ta^fai. 
corresponding  view   ascribed   to  Fro-  *  P.  356.  >  P.  354. 


APPEARANCE  THE  ONLY  STANDARD.  23S 

not  reallj  eidst.  With  those  who  take  this  view,  however, 
it  is  always  understood  that  the  definitions  represent  ideas, 
though  not  ideas  to  which  real  objects  can  be  fonnd  exEictlj 
answering.  Perhaps,  if  pressed  about  their  distinction 
between  idea  and  reaJitj,  they  might  find  it  hard  consist- 
ently to  maintain  it,  but  it  is  by  this  practically  that  they 
keep  their  theory  afloat.  Hume  can  admit  no  such  dis- 
tinction* The  r^  with  him  is  the  impression,  and  the  idea 
the  fainter  impression.  There  can  be  no  idea  of  a  straight  line, 
a  curve,  a  circle,  a  right  angle,  a  plane,  other  than  the  impres- 
sion, otiber  than  the  '  appearance  to  the  eye,'  and  there  are 
no  appearances  exactly  answering  to  the  mathematical  defini- 
tions. If  they  do  not  exactly  answer,  they  might  as  weU  for  the 
purposes  of  mathematical  demonstration  not  answer  at  all. 
The  Geometrician,  having  found  that  the  angles  at  the  base 
of  this  isosceles  triangle  are  equal  to  each  other,  at  once 
takes  the  equality  to  be  true  of  all  isosceles  triangles,  as 
being  exactly  like  the  original  one,  and  on  the  strength  of 
this  establishes  many  other  propositions.  But,  according  to 
flume,  no  idea  that  we  could  have  would  be  one  of  which 
the  sides  were  precisely  equal.  The  Fifth  Proposition  of 
Euclid  then  is  not  precisely  true  of  the  particular  idea  that 
we  have  before  us  when  we  follow  the  demonstration.  Much 
less  can  it  be  true  of  the  ideas,  i.e.  the  several  appearances 
of  colour,  indefinitely  varying  firom  this,  which  we  have 
before  us  when  we  follow  the  other  demonstrations  in  which 
the  equality  of  the  angles  at  the  base  of  an  isosceles  is  taken 
for  granted* 

276.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  what  we  have  to  lament  is  not  The  ad- 
that  Hume  *  pushed  his  doctrine  too  far,'  so  far  as  to  exclude  J^^^o 
ideas  of   those    exact    proportions    in    space  with  which  reUtionsof 
geometry  purports  to  deal,  but  that  he  did  not  carry  it  far  ^''^^^^  i 
enough  to  see  that  it  excluded  all  ideas  of  quantitative  sense  re- 
relations  whatever.      He  thus  pays    the  penalty  for  his  «<>▼«■  di^ 
equivocation  between  a  feeling  of  colour  and  a  disposition  togeneml 
of  coloured  points.     Even  alongside  of  his  admission  that  pi^pofli- 
*  relations  of  space  and  time*  are  independent  of  the  nature  SiwnT 
of  the  ideas  so  related,  which  amounts  to  the  admission 
that  of  space  and  time  there  are  no  ideas  at  all  in  his  sense 
of  the  word,  he  allows  himself  to  treat  *  proportions  between 
spaces '  as  depending  entirely  on  our  ideas  of  the  spaces — 
depending  ou  ideas  which  in  the  context  he  by  implication 


834  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

admits  that  we  have  not.*  K,  instead  of  thus  equivocating, 
he  had  asked  himself  how  sensations  of  colour  and  touch 
could  be  added  or  divided,  how  one  could  serve  as  a  measure 
of  the  size  of  another,  he  might  have  seen  that  onlj  in 
virtue  of  that  in  the  *  general  appearance  *  of  objects  which, 
in  his  own  language,  is  ^  independent  of  the  nature  of  the 
ideas  themselves  * — i.e.  which  does  not  belong  to  them  as  feel- 
ings, but  is  added  by  the  comparing  and  combining  thought — 
are  the  proportions  of  greater,  less,  and  equal  predieable 
of  them  at  all ;  that  what  thought  has  thus  added,  viz.  limi- 
taticui  by  mutual  externality,  it  can  abstract ;  and  that  by 
such  abstraction  of  the  limit  it  obtains  those  several  ter- 
minationSy  as  Hume  well  calls  them  —  the  surface  ter- 
minating bodies,  the  line  terminating  surfaces,  the  point 
terminating  lines — &om  which  it  constructs  the  world  of 
pure  space :  that  thus  the  same  action  of  thought  in  sense, 
which  alone  renders  appearances  measurable,  gives  an 
object  matter  which,  because  the  pure  construction  of 
thought,  we  can  measure  exactly  and  with  the  certainty 
that  the  judgment  based  on  a  comparison  of  magnitudes  in 
a  single  case  is  true  of  all  possible  cases,  because  in  none  of 
these  can  any  other  conditions  be  present  than  those  which 
we  have  consciously  put  there. 
Humedoei  277.  To  have  arrived  at  this  conclusion  Hume  had  only 
admit  this  ^  extend  to  proportions  in  space  the  principle  upon  which 
in  reg£urd  the  impossibility  of  sensualizing  arithmetic  compels  him  to 
^ra"°^"  ^®*^  with  proportions  in  number.  *  We  are  possessed,'  he 
says,  *  of  a  precise  standard  by  which  we  can  judge  of  the 
equality  and  proportion  of  numbers;  and  according  as 
they  correspond  or  not  to  that  standard  we  determine 
their  relations  without  any  possibility  of  error.  When  two 
numbers  are  so  combined,  as.  that  the  one  has  always  an 
unite  answering  to  every  unite  of  the  other,  we  pronounce 
them  equal.'*  Now  what  are  the  unites  here  sjKjken  of? 
If  they  were  those  single  impressions  which  he  elsewhere  • 
seems  to  regard  as  alone  properly  tmites,  the  point  of  the 
passage  would  be  gone,  for  combinations  of  such  unites 
could  at  any  rate  only  yield  those  *  general  appearances '  of 
whose  proportions  we  have  been  previously  told  there  can  be 
no   precise  standard.     They  can  be  no  other  than  those 

»  Part  ra.  §  1,  sub  init  •  P.  874.  »  Above,  par.  268. 


IDEA  OF  VACUUM.  235 

oniteB  which,  not  being  impressions,  he  has  to  call  ^fictitious 
denominations' — unites  which  are  nothing  except  in  relation 
to  each  other  and  of  which  each,  being  in  turn  divisible,  is 
itself  a  true  number.  We  can  easily  retort  upon  Hume, 
then,  when  he  argues  that  the  supposition  of  infinite  divisi- 
bility is  incompatible  yrith  any  comparison  of  quantities 
because  with  any  unite  of  measurement,  that,  according  to 
his  own  virtual  admission,  in  the  only  case  where  such  com- 
parison is  exact  the  ultimate  unite  of  measurement  is  still 
itself  divisible ;  which,  indeed,  is  no  more  than  saying  that 
whatever  measures  quantity  must  itself  be  a  quantity,^  and 
that  therefore  quantity  is  infinitely  divisible.  K  Hume, 
Instead  of  slurring  over  this  characteristic  of  the  science 
of  number,  had  set  himself  to  explain  it,  he  would  have 
found  that  the  only  possible  explanation  of  it  was  one 
equally  applicable  to  the  science  of  space — that  what  is 
true  of  the  unite,  as  the  abstraction  of  distinctness,  is  true 
also  of  the  abstraction  of  externality.  As  the  unite,  be- 
cause constituted  by  relation  to  other  unites,  so  soon  as 
considered  breaks  into  multiplicity,  and  only  for  that  reason 
is  a  quantity  by  which  other  quantities  can  be  measured ; 
so  is  it  also  with  the  limit  in  whatever  form  abstracted, 
whether  as  point,  line,  or  surfax^e.  If  the  fact  that  number 
can  have  no  least  part  since  each  part  is  itself  a  number  or 
nothing,  so  far  from  being  incompatible  with  the  finiteness 
of  number,  is  the  consequence  of  that  finiteness,  neither 
can  the  like  attribute  in  spaces  be  incompatible  with  their 
being  definite  magnitudes,  that  can  be  compared  with  and 
measured  by  each  other.  The  real  difference,  which  is  also 
the  rationale  of  Hume's  different  procedure  in  the  two  cases, 
is  that  the  conception  of  space  is  more  easily  confused  than 
that  of  number  with  the  feelings  to  which  it  is  applied,  and 
which  through  such  application  become  sensible  spaces. 
Hence  the  liability  to  the  supposition,  which  is  at  bottom 
Hume's,  that  the  last  feeling  in  the  process  of  diminution 
before  such  sensible  space  disappears  (being  the  ^  minimum 
visibile ')  is  the  least  possible  portion  of  space. 

278.  Just  as  that  reduction  of  consciousness  to  feeling,  with 
which  really  excludes  the  idea  of  quantity  altogether,  is  by  ^^^  »d«a 
Hume  only  recognised  as  incompatible  with  its  infinite  divisi-  impossu"* 
bility,  so  it  is  not  recognised  as  extinguishing  space  altogether,  We,  bnt 
but  only  space  as  a  vacuum.    K  it  be  true,  he  says,  *  that  the  ,^nio» 


286  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

So  than  idea  of  space  is  nothing  but  the  idea  of  visible  or  tangible 
•Mce*^  points  distributed  in  a  certain  order,  it  follows  that  we  can 
form  no  idea  of  vacuum,  or  space  where  there  is  nothing 
visible  or  tangible.'^  Here  as  elsewhere  the  acceptability  of 
his  statement  lies  in  its  being  taken  in  a  sense  which  ac- 
cording to  his  principles  cannot  properly  belong  to  it.  It 
is  one  doctrine  that  the  ideas  of  space  and  body  are  es- 
Bentially  correlative,  and  quite  another  that  the  idea  of  space 
is  equivalent  to  a  feeling  of  sight  or  touch.  It  is  of  the  latter 
doctrine  that  Hume's  denial  of  a  vacuum  is  the  corollary ; 
but  it  is  the  former  that  gains  acceptance  for  this  denial  in 
the  mind  of  his  reader.  Space  we  have  already  spoken  of  as 
the  relation  of  externality.  If,  abstracting  this  relation  from 
the  world  of  which  it  is  the  uniform  but  most  elementary 
determination,  we  regard  it  as  a  relation  between  objects 
having  no  other  determination,  these  become  spaces  and 
nothing  but  spaces — space  pure  and  simple,  vdcimm.  But  we 
have  known  ^e  world  in  confused  fulness  before  we  detach 
its  constituent  relations  in  the  clearness  of  unreal  abstraction. 
Wehave  known  bodies  ervy^ej^vfUiwpjbeforewethinktheir  limits 
apart  and  outof  these  construct  a  world  of  purespace.  It  is  thus 
in  a  sense  true  that  in  the  development  of  our  consciousness 
an  idea  of  body  precedes  that  of  space,  though  the  ohtttraetion 
of  space — ^the  detachment  of  the  relation  so-called  from  the 
real  complex  of  relations — precedes  that  of  body ;  and  it  is 
this  fact  that,  in  the  face  of  geometry,  strengthens  common 
sense  in  its  position  that  an  idea  of  vacuum  is  impossible. 
It  is  not,  however,  the  inseparability  of  space  from  body 
whether  in  reality  or  for  our  consciousness,  but  its  identity 
with  a  certain  sort  of  feeling,  that  is  implied  in  Hume's  ex- 
clusion of  the  idea  of  vacuum.  *  Body,'  as  other  than  feeling, 
is  with  him  as  much  a  fiction  as  vacuum.  That  there  can 
be  no  idea  of  vacuum,  is  thus  in  fact  merely  his  negative  way 
of  putting  that  proposition  of  which  the  positive  form  is,  that 
space  is  a  compound  impression  of  sight  and  touch.  Having 
examined  that  proposition  in  the  positive,  we  need  not  ex- 
amine it  again  in  the  negative  form.  It  will  be  more  to  the 
purpose  to  enquire  whether  the  *  tendency  to  suppose  *  or 
*  propensity  to  feign  '  by  which,  in  the  absence  of  any  such 
idea,  om*  language  about  '  pure  space '  has  to  be  accomited 

»  P.  358. 


VACUUM  ADMITTED  UNDER  ANOTHER  NAME.       237 

for,  does  not  according  to  Humors  own  showing  presuppose 
snch  an  idea. 

279.  By  vacaum  he  understands  invisible  and  intangible  How  ii  ig 
extension.  If  an  idea  of  vacuum,  then,  is  possible  at  all,  he  ^^^^^ 
argues,  it  must  be  possible  for  darkness  and  mere  motion  to  we  had 
convey  it.  That  they  cannot  do  so  alone  is  clear  from  the  '<^  ^ 
consideration  that  darkness  is  ^  no  positive  idea '  and  that  an  according 
*  invariable  motion,'  such  as  that  of  a  *  man  supported  in  the  ^  Hume. 
air  and  softly  conveyed  along  by  some  invisible  power,'  gives 
no  idea  at  alL  Neither  can  they  do  so  when  *  attended  with 
visible  and  tangible  objects.'  *When  two  bodies  present 
themselves  where  there  was  formerly  an  entire  darkness,  the 
only  change  that  is  discoverable  is  in  the  appearance  of  these 
two  objects :  all  the  rest  continues  to  be,  as  before,  a  perfect 
negation  of  light  and  of  every  coloured  or  tangible  object.'* 
'  Such  dark  and  indistinguishable  distance  between  two  bodies 
can  never  produce  the  idea  of  extension,'  any  more  than 
blindness  can.  Neither  can  a  like  '  imaginary  distance  be- 
tween tangible  and  solid  bodies.'  *  Suppose  two  cases,  viz. 
that  of  a  man  supported  in  the  air,  and  moving  his  limbs  to 
and  fro  without  meeting  anything  tangible ;  and  that  of  a 
man  who,  feeling  something  tangible,  leaves  it,  and  after  a 
motion  of  which  he  is  sensible  x>erceives  another  tangible 
object.  Wherein  consists  the  difference  between  these  two 
cases  P  No  one  will  scruple  to  afQrm  that  it  consists  merely 
in  the  i)erceiving  those  object43,  and  that  the  sensation  which 
arises  from  the  motion  is  in  both  cases  the  same;  and  as 
that  sensation  is  not  capable  of  conveying  to  us  an  idea  of 
extension,  when  unaccompanied  with  some  other  perception, 
it  can  no  more  give  us  tlmt  idea,  when  mixed  with  the  im- 
pressions of  tangible  objects,  since  that  mixture  produces  no 
alteration  upon  it.'*  But  though  a  ^  distance  not  filled  with 
any  coloured  or  solid  object'  cannot  give  us  an  idea  of  vsicuum, 
it  is  the  cause  why  we  falsely  imagine  that  we  can  form  such 
an  idea.  There  are  ^  three  relations ' — natural  relations  ac- 
cording to  Hume's  phraseology* — ^between  it  and  that  distance 
which  really  *  conveys  the  idea  of  extension.'  ^  The  distant 
objects  affect  the  senses  in  the  same  manner,  whether  sepa- 
rated by  the  one  distance  or  the  other ;  the  former  specieii 
of  distance  is  found  capable  of  receiving  the  latter ;  and  fchey 

«  P.  862.  «  P.  363.  »  Above,  §  206. 


2S8  GENERAL  INTRODUCnON. 

both  eqnallj  diminish  the  force  of  every  quality.    These  re- 
lations betwixt  the  two  kinds  of  distance  will  afford  ns  an 
easy  reason  why  the  one  has  so  often  been  taken  for  the 
other,  and  why  we  imagine  we  have  an  idea  of  extension 
without  the  idea  of  anj  object  either  of  the  sight  or  feeling.'^ 
His  0xpU-       280.  It  appears  then  that  we  have  an  idea  of  ^  distance 
"ues^th^'  ^^^^  ^*^  ®^y  coloured  or  solid  object.'    To  speak  of  this 
we  haye      distance  as  <  imaginary '  or  fictitious  can  according  to  Hume's 
an  idea       principles  make  no  difference,  so  long  as  he  admits,  which 
^e  wnM.    h^  is  obliged  to  do,  that  we  actually  have  an  idea  of  it ;  for 
every  idea,  being  derived  from  an  impression,  is  as  much  or 
as  little  imaginary  as  every  other.    And  not  onlj  have  we 
such  an  idea,  but  Hume's  account  of  the  '  relations '  between 
it  and  the  idea  of  extension  implies  that,  as  ideas  of  dieia$icey 
they  do  not  differ  at  all.     But  the  idea  of  '  distance  unfilled 
with  any  coloured  or  solid  object '  is  the  idea  of  vacuum.    It 
follows  that  the  idea  of  extension  does  not  differ  fix>m  that  of 
vacuum,  except  so  far  as  it  is  other  than  the  idea  of  distance. 
But  it  is  from  the  consideration  of  distance  that  Hume  him- 
self expressly  derives  it;*   and  so  derived,  it  can  no  more 
differ  from  distance  than  an  idea  from  a  corresponding  im- 
pression.   Thus,  after  all,  he  has  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
to  admit  the  idea  of  vacuum,  but  saves  appearances  bj  re- 
fusing to  call  it  extension — the  sole  reason  for  such  reftisal 
being  the  supposition  that  every  idea,   and  therefore  the 
idea   of  extension,  must  be  a  datum  of  sense,  which  the 
admission  of  an  idea  of '  invisible  and  intangible  distance' 
abeady  contradicts. 
By  alike         281.  We  now  know  the  nature  of  that  preliminary  mani- 
he^s  able^  Puliation  which  *  impressions  and  ideas '  have  to  undergo,  if 
to  explain    their  association  is  to  yield  the  result  which  Hume  requires 
pearance     — ^  through  it  the  succession  of  feelings  is  to  become  a 
of  our        knowledge  of  things  and  their  relations.     Such  a  result  was 
BuS^eas   ^^q^"^  ^^  ^^^  ^°ly  naeans  of  maintaining  together  the  two 
B8  Gaosa-    characteristic  positions  of  Locke's  philosophy ;  that,  namely, 
IdaiSt^      the  only  world  we  can  know  Is  the  world  of  *  ideas,'  and  that 
thought  cannot  originate  ideas.     Those  relations,  which 
Locke  had  inconsistently  treated  at  once  as  intellectual 
superinductions  and  as  ultimate  conditions  of  reality,  must  be 
dealt  with  by  one  of  two  methods.    They  must  be  reduced  to 

*  P.  S64.  '  Pkrt  n.  §  8,  sab.  iut 


TRANSITION  TO  IDEA  OF  CAUSE.  239 

impressions  where  that  could  plansiblj  be  done:  where  it 
could  noty  it  must  be  admitted  that  we  have  no  ideas  of 
them,  but  only  *  tendencies  to  suppose  *  that  we  have  such, 
arising  from  ^e  association,  through  ^natural  relations/  of 
the  ideas  that  we  have.  So  dexterously  does  Hume  work 
the  former  method  that,  of  all  the  *  philosophical  relations ' 
which  he  recognizes,  only  Identity  and  Causation  remain  to 
be  disposed  of  by  the  latter ;  and  if  the  other  relations — 
resemblance,  time  and  space,  proportion  in  quantity  and 
degree  in  quality — could  really  be  admitted  as  data  of  sense, 
there  would  at  least  be  a  possible  basis  for  those  '  tendencies 
to  suppose '  which,  in  the  absence  of  any  corresponding  ideas, 
the  terms  ^  Identity '  and  ^  Causation '  must  be  taken  to  re- 
present. But,  as  we  have  shown,  they  can  only  be  claimed 
for  sense,  if  sense  is  so  far  one  with  thought— one  not  by 
conversion  of  thought  into  sense  but  by  taking  of  sense  into 
thought — ^as  that  Hume's  favourite  appeals  to  sense  against 
the  reality  of  intelligible  relations  become  unmeaning.  They 
may  be  ^  impressions,'  there  may  be  ^  impressions  of  them,' 
but  only  if  we  deny  of  the  impression  what  Hume  asserts  of 
it,  and  asserb  of  it  ^hat  he  denies — only  if  we  understand  by 
^impression'  not  an  ^internal  and  perishing  existence;'  not 
that  which,  if  other  than  taste,  colour,  sound,  smell  or  touch, 
must  be  a  ^  passion  or  emotion ' ;  not  that  which  carries  no 
reference  to  an  object  other  than  itself,  and  which  must  either 
be  single  or  compound;  but  something  permanent  and  con- 
stituted by  permanenUy  coexisting  parts;  something  that 
may  '  be  conjoined  with '  any  feeling,  because  it  is  none ;  that 
always  carries  with  it  a  reference  to  a  subject  which  it  is  not 
but  of  which  it  is  a  quality ;  and  that  is  both  many  and  one, 
since  ^  in  its  simplicity  it  contains  many  different  resemblances 
and  relations.' 

282.  In  the  account  just  adduced  of  vacuum,  the  effect  of 
that  double  dealing  with  ^  impressions,'  which  we  shall  have 
to  trace  at  large  in  Hume's  explanation  of  our  language 
about  Causation  and  Identity,  is  already  exhibited  in  little. 
Just  as,  after  the  idea  of  pure  space  has  been  excluded  because 
not  a  copy  of  any  possible  impression,  we  yet  find  an  *  idea.* 
only  differing  from  it  in  name,  introduced  as  the  basis  of  thar. 
tendency  to  suppose  which  is  to  take  the  place  of  the  ex- 
cluded idea,  so  we  shall  find  ideas  of  relation  in  the  way  of 
Identity  and  Causation — ideas  which  accoraing  to  Hume  we 


240  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

have  not— presupposed  as  the  source  of  those  ^  propensities 

to  feign '  by  which  he  accounts  for  the  appearance  of  our 

having  thenu 

Know-  283.  The  primary  characteristic  of  these  relations  accord- 

nlftion  in  ^  ^  Hume,  which  they  share  with  those  of  space  and  time, 

way  of        and  which  in  fiict  vitiates  that  definition  of  ^  philosophical 

and***^      relation,*  as  depending  on  comparison,  which  he  adopts,  is 

Caosation    that  they  ^  depend  not  on  the  ideas  compared  together,  bnt 

^^Lodte'a  ™*y  ^  changed  without  any  change  in  the  ideas.*  ■    It 

deanition    foUows  that  they  are  not  objects  of  knowledge,  according  to 

jTj^®^"     the  definition  of  knowledge  which  Hume  inherited,  as  *  the 

perception  of  agreement  or  disagreement  between  ideas/   A 

partial  recognition  of  this  consequence  in  regard  to  cause 

and  effect  we  found  in  Locke's  suspicion  that  a  science  of 

nature  was  impossible — impossible  because,  however  often  a 

certain  ^  idea  of  quality  and  substance '  may  have  followed 

or  accompanied  another,  such  sequence  or  accompaniment 

never  amounts  to  agreement  or  'necessary  connexion'  be^ 

tween  the  ideas,  and  therefore  never  can  warrant  a  general 

assertion,  but  only  the  particular  one,  that  the  ideas  in 

question  have  so  many  times  occurred 'in  such  an  order. 

*  Matters  of  fact,*  however,  which  no  more  consist  in  agree- 
ment of  ideas  than  does  causation,  are  by  Locke  treated 
without  scruple  as  matter  of  knowledge  when  they  can  be 
regarded  as  relations  between  present  sensations.    Thus  the 

*  particular  experiment  *  in  Physics  constitutes  knowledge — 
the  knowledge,  for  instance,  that  a  piece  of  gold  is  now 
dissolved  in  aqua  regia ;  and  when  '  I  myself  see  a  man 
walk  on  the  ice,  it  is  knowledge.'  In  such  cases  it  does  not 
occur  to  him  to  ask,  either  what  are  the  ideas  that  agree  or 
how  much  of  the  experiment  is  a  present  sensation.'  Nor 
does  Hume  commonly  carry  his  analysis  further.  After 
admitting  that  the  relations  called  identity  and  situation  in 
time  and  place '  do  not  depend  on  the  nature  of  the  ideas 
related,  he  proceeds :  'When  both  the  objects  are  present  to 
the  senses  along  with  the  relation,  we  call  this  perception 
rather  than  reasoning ;  nor  is  there  in  this  case  any  exercise 
of  the  thought  or  any  action,  properly  speaking,  but  a  mere 
passive  admission  of  the  impressions  through  the  organs  of 
sensation.    According  to  this  way  of  thinking,  we  ought  not 

*  P.  372»  *  Above,  §$  1 22  &  123. 


PERCEPTION  AND  REASONING.  2*1 

to  receiye  as  reasoning  any  of  the  observations  we  may  make 
concerning  identity  and  the  relations  of  time  and  fUice ;  since 
in  none  of  them  tiiie  mind  can  go  beyond  what  is  immedi- 
ately present  to  the  senses,  either  to  discoyer  the  real  exist- 
ence or  the  relations  of  objects.'  ' 

284.  This  passage  points  out  the  way  whicb  Hume's  |^^^5* 
doctrine  of  causation  was  to  follow.  That  in  any  case  *  the  ^^^  from 
mind  should  go  beyond  a  present  feeling,  either  to  discover  an  obj«t 
the  real  existence  or  the  relations  of  objects '  other  than  ^^em- 
present  feelings,  was  what  he  could  not  consistently  admit.  In  beredto 
the  judgment  of  causation,  however,  it  seems  to  do  so.  *  Prom  ^  ^ 
the  existence  or  action  of  one  object,'  seen  or  remembered,  it 
seems  to  be  assured  of  the  existence  or  action  of  another,  not 
seen  or  remembered,  on  the  ground  of  a  necessary  connection 
between  the  two.'  It  is  such  assurance  that  is  reckoned  to  con- 
stitute reasoning  in  the  distinctive  sense  of  the  term,  as  differ- 
ent at  once  fix>m  the  analysis  of  complex  ideas  and  the  simple 
succession  of  ideas— such  reasoning  as,  in  the  language  of  a 
later  philosophy,  can  yield  synthetic  propositions.  WTiat 
Hume  has  to  do,  then,  is  to  explain  this  '  assurance '  away 
by  showing  that  it  is  not  essentially  different  from  that 
judgment  of  relation  in  time  and  place  which,  because  the 
related  objects  are  '  present  to  the  senses  along  with  the 
xelation,'  is  called  '  perception  rather  than  reasoning,'  and 
to  which  no  '  exercise  of  the  thought '  is  necessary,  but  a 
'  mere  passive  admission  of  impressions  through  the  organs 
of  sensation.'  Nor,  for  the  assimilation  of  reasoning  to 
perception,  is  anything  further  needed  than  a  reference  to 
the  connection  of  ideas  with  impressions  and  of  the  ideas 
of  imagination  with  those  of  memory,  as  originally  stated 
by  Hume.  When  both  of  the  objects  compared  are  present 
to  the  senses,  we  call  the  comparison  perception;  when 
neither,  or  only  one,  is  so  present,  we  call  it  reasoning.  But 
the  difference  between  the  object  that  is  present  to  sense, 
and  that  which  is  not,  is  merely  the  difference  between  im- 
pression and  idea,  which  again  is  merely  the  difference  be- 
tween the  more  and  the  less  lively  feeling.'  To  feeling,  whether 
with  more  or  with  less  vivacity,  every  object,  whether  of  per- 
ception or  reasoning,  must  alike  be  present.  Is  it  then  a 
sufficient  accoimt  of  the  matter,  according  to  Hume,  to  say 
that  when  we  are  conscious  of  contiguity  and  succession 

'  P.  876.  •  Pp.  876,  384.  ■  Pp.  827,  376. 

VOL.   I.  R 


242  GENERAL  mTRODUCTION. 

between  objects  of  which  both  are  impressioiiB  we  call  it 
perception ;  but  that  when  both  objects  are  ideas,  or  one 
an  impression  and  the  other  an  idea,  we  call  it  reasoning  ? 
Not  quite  so.  Suppose  that  I  *  have  seen  that  species  of 
object  we  call  flame,  and  have  afterwards  felt  that  species  of 
sensation  we  call  heat.*  If  I  afterwards  remembered  the 
succession  of  the  feeling  upon  the  sight,  both  objects  (ac- 
cording to  Hume's  original  usage  of  terms  ')  would  be  ideas 
as  distinct  from  the  impressions;  or,  if  upon  seeing  the 
flame  I  remembered  the  previous  experience  of  heat,  one 
object  would  be  an  idea ;  but  we  should  not  reckon  it  a  case 
of  reasoning.  '  In  all  cases  wherein  we  reason  concerning 
objects,  there  is  only  one  either  perceived  or  rememberedy  and 
the  other  is  supplied  in  conformity  to  our  past  experience ' 
— supplied  by  the  only  other  faculty  than  memory  that  can 
*  supply  an  idea,*  viz.  imagination.^ 
Relation  of  285.  This  being  the  only  account  of '  inference  from  the 
cwiseMd  known  to  the  unknown,'  which  Hume  could  consistently 
same  as  admit,  his  view  of  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  must  be 
this  trans-  adjusted  to  it.  It  could  not  be  other  than  a  relation  either 
between  impression  and  impression,  or  between  impression 
and  idea,  or  between  idea  and  idea ;  and  all  these  relations 
are  equally  between  feelings  that  we  experience.  Thus,  in- 
stead of  being  the  *  objective  basis '  on  which  inference  from 
the  known  to  the  unknown  rests,  it  is  itself  the  inference  ; 
or,  more  properly,  it  and  the  inference  alike  disappear  into  a 
particular  sort  of  transition  from  feeling  to  feeling.  The 
problem,  then,  is  to  account  for  its  seeming  to  be  other  than 
this.  ^  There  is  nothing  in  any  objects  to  persuade  us  that 
they  are  always  remote  or  always  contiguous ;  and  when  from 
experience  and  observation  we  discover  that  the  relation  in 
this  particular  is  invariable,  we  always  conclude  that  there 
is  some  secret  cause  which  separates  or  unites  them.' '  It 
would  seem^  then,  that  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  is 
something  which  we  infer  from  experience,  from  the  connec- 
tion of  impressions  and  ideas,  but  which  is  not  itself  im- 
pression or  idea.  And  it  would  seem  farther,  that,  as  we 
infer  such  an  unexperienced  relation,  so  likewise  we  make 
inferences  from  it.  In  regard  to  identity  *  we  readily  sup- 
pose an  object  may  continue  individually  the  same,  though 
several  times  absent  from  and  present  to  the  senses ;  and 

»  Above,  par.  196.  «  Pp.  384.  888.  •  P.  376. 


IS  NECESSARY  CONNECTION  'OBJECTIVE*?         243 

ascribe  to  it  an  identity,  notwithstanding  the  interruption 
of  the  perception,  whenever  we  conclude  that  if  we  had 
kept  our  hand  or  eye  constantly  upon  it,  it  would  haye 
conveyed  an  invariable  and  uninterrupted  perception.  But 
this  conclusion  beyond  the  impressions  of  our  senses  can 
be  founded  only  on  the  connection  of  cause  <md  effect ;  nor 
can  we  otherwise  have  any  security  that  the  object  is  not 
changed  upon  us,  however  much  the  new  object  may  re- 
semble that  which  was  formerly  present  to  the  senses.' 

286.  This  relation  which,  going  beyond  our  actual  ex-  Yet  seems 
perience,  we  seem  to  infer  as  the  explanation  of  invariable  this.  Hc»» 
contiguity  in  place  or  time  of  certain  impressions,  and  from  this  »p- 
which  again  we  seem  to  infer  the  identity  of  an  object  of  STtoTe^ 
which  the  perception  has  been  interrupted,  is  what  we  call  explained, 
necessary  connection.     It  is  their  supposed  necessary  con- 
nection which  distinguishes  objects  related  as  cause  and  effect 

from  those  related  merely  in  the  way  of  contiguity  and  suc- 
cession,^ and  it  is  a  like  supposition  that  leads  us  to  infer 
what  we  do  not  see  or  remember  from  what  we  do.  If  then 
the  reduction  of  thought  and  the  intelligible  world  to  feeling 
was  to  be  made  good,  this  supposition,  not  being  an  im- 
pression of  sense  or  a  copy  of  such,  must  be  shown  to  be  an 
'  impression  of  reflection,'  according  to  Hume's  sense  of  the 
term,  i.e.  a  tendency  of  the  soul,  analogous  to  desire  and 
aversion,  hope  and  fear,  derived  from  impressions  of  sense 
but  not  copied  from  them;*  and  the  inference  which  it  de- 
termines must  be  shown  to  be  the  work  of  imagination,  as 
affected  by  such  impression  of  reflection.  This  in  brief  is 
the  purport  of  Hume's  doctrine  of  causation. 

287.  After  his  manner,  however,  he  will  go  about  with  his  Inference, 
reader.     The  supposed  *  objective  basis'  of  knowledge  is  to  "8*»°«o» 
be  made  to  disappear,  but  in  such  a  way  that  no  one  shall  tion  of 
miss  it.    So  dexterously,  indeed,  is  this  done,  that  perhaps  to  necessary 
this  day  the  ordinary  student  of  Hume  is  scarcely  conscious  to^*ex°°' 
of  the  disappearance.     Hume  merely  announces  to  begin  plained  be- 
with  that  he  will  *  postpone  the  direct  survey  of  this  question  comwction. 
concerning  the  nature  of  necessary  connection,'  and  deal  first 

with  these  other  two  questions,  viz.  (1)  *  For  what  reason  we 
pronounce  it  necessary  that  everything  whose  existence  has  a 
beginning,  should  also  have  a  cause  P'  and  (2)  *  Why  we 
conclude  that  such  particular  causes  must  necessarily  have 

'  P.  37«.  •  Above,  par.  195. 

B  2 


244  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

such  particular  eflFects ;  and  what  is  the  nature  of  that  in- 
ference we  draw  fipom  the  one  to  the  other,  and  of  the  belief 
we  repose  in  itP '  That  is  to  say,  he  will  consider  the  in- 
ference from  cause  or  effect,  before  he  considers  cause  and 
effect  as  a  rekition  between  objects,  on  which  the  inference  is 
supposed  to  depend.  Meanwhile  necessary  connection,  as  a 
relation  between  objects,  is  naturally  supposed  in  some  sense 
or  other  to  survive.  In  what  sense,  the  reader  expects  to 
find  when  these  two  preliminary  questions  have  been  an- 
swered. But  when  they  have  been  answered,  necessary  con- 
nection, as  a  relation  between  objects,  turns  out  to  have 
vanished. 
Account  of  288.  With  the  first  of  the  above  questions  Hume  only 
^®  *°?t^,,    concerns  himself  so  far  as  to  show  that  we  cannot  know 

6DC6  fflT6]l  ^ 

by  Locke  either  intuitively  or  demonstratively,  in  Locke's  sense  of 
wactoi^  the  words,  that  'everything  whose  existence  has  a  be- 
ginning also  has  a  cause.'  Locke's  own  argument  for  the 
necessity  of  causation — ^that  ^  something  cannot  be  produced 
by  nothing' — ^as  well  as  Clarke's — ^that  *if  anything  wanted 
a  cause  it  would  produce  itself,  i.e.  exist  before  it  existed ' — 
are  merely  different  ways,  as  Hume  shows,  of  assuming  the 
point  in  question.  *If  everything  must  have  a  cause,  it 
follows  that  upon  exclusion  of  other  causes  we  must  accept 
of  the  object  itself,  or  of  nothing,  as  causes.  But  'tis  the  very 
point  in  question,  whether  everything  must  have  a  cause  or 
not."  On  that  point,  according  to  Locke's  own  showing, 
there  can  be  no  certainty,  intuitive  or  demonstrative;  for 
between  the  idea  of  beginning  to  exist  and  the  idea  of  cause 
there  is  clearly  no  agreement,  mediate  or  immediate.  They 
are  not  similar  feelings,  they  are  not  quantities  that  can  be 
measured  against  each  other,  and  to  these  alone  can  tlie 
definition  of  knowledge  and  reasoning,  which  Hume  retained, 
apply.  There  thus  disappears  that  last  remnant  of  *  know- 
ledge '  in  regard  to  nature  which  Locke  had  allowed  to  sur- 
vive— the  knowledge  that  there  is  a  necessary  connection, 
though  one  which  we  cannot  find  out.' 
Three  289.  Having  thus  shown,  as  he  conceives,  what  the  tme 

exSained**  ^.nswer  to  the  first  of  the  above  questions  is  not,  Hume  pro- 
in  the  in-  cceds  to  show  what  it  is  by  answering  the  second.  *  Since  it 
pord^ncto  ^  °^^  ^^^™  knowledge  or  any  scientific  reasoning  that  we 
Home.        derive  the  opinion  of  the  necessity  of  a  cause  to  every  new 

»  P.  382.  •  Cf.  Locke  iv.  3,  29,  and  Introduc,  par,  121. 


NO  AGREEMENT  BETWEEN  CAUSE  AND  EFFECT.     245 

productioii/  it  must  be  from  experience ; '  and  every  general 
opinion  derived  from  experience  is  merely  the  summary  of  a 
multitude  of  particular  ones.  Accordingly  when  it  has  been 
explained  why  we  infer  particular  causes  from  particular 
effects  (and  vice  verm),  the  inference  from  every  event  to  a 
cause  will  have  explained  itself.  Now  *  all  our  arguments 
concerning  causes  and  effects  consist  both  of  an  impression 
of  the  memory  or  senses,  and  of  the  idea  of  that  existence 
which  produces  the  object  of  the  impression  or  is  produced 
by  it.  Here,  therefore,  we  have  three  things  to  explain,  viz. 
first,  the  original  impression ;  secondly,  the  transition  to  the 
idea  of  the  connected  cause  or  effect ;  thirdly,  the  nature 
and  qualities  of  that  idea.'* 

290.  As  to  the  original  impression  we  must  notice  that  a.  Theori- 
there  is  a  certain  inconsistency  with  Hume's  previous  usage  ginal.im- 
of  terms  in  speaking  of  an  impression  of  memory  at  aU.*  L)m  which 
This,  however,  will  be  excused  when  we  reflect  that  according  t^»  ^im- 
to  him  impi-ession  and  idea  only  differ  in  liveliness,  and  that  m^e!" 
he  is  consistent  in  claiming  for  the  ideas  of  memory,  not 
indeed  the  maximum,  but  a  high  degree  of  vivacity,  superior 
to  that  which  belongs  to  ideas  of  imagination.    All  that  can 
be  said,  then,  of  that  '  original  impression,'  whether  of  the 
memory  or  senses,  which  is  necessary  to  any  'reasoning  from 
cause  or  effect,'  is  that  it  is  highly  vivacious.     That  the 
transition  from  it  to  the  '  idea  of  the  counected  cause  or 
effect '  is  not  determined  by  reasq^.  has  already  been  settled. 
It  could  only  be' "so  determined/according  to  the  received 
account  of  reason,  if  there  were  some  agreement  in  respect 
of  quantity  or  quality  between  the  idea  of  cause  and  that  of 
the  effect,  to  be  ascertained  by  the  interposition  of  other 
ideas.^     But  when  we  examine  any  particular  objects  that 
we  hold  to  be  related  as  cause  and  effect,  e.g.  the  sight  of 
flame  and  the  feeling  of  heat,  we  find  no  such  agreement. 
What  we  do  find  is  their  'constant  conjunction'  in  experience, 
and  '  conjunction '  is  equivalent  to  tibat  *  contiguity  in  time 
and  place,'  which  has  already  been  pointed  out  as  one  of 
those  ^  natural  relations '  which  act  as  *  principles  of  union ' 
between  ideas.*    Because  the  impression  of  fiame  has  always  h.  The 
been  found  to  be  followed  by  the  impression  of  heat,  the  idea  tmnsitioB 

>  p.  888.  *  Cf.  Locke  it.  17,  2. 

>  P.  885.  *  Above,  par.  206. 
*  Above,  par.  196. 


346  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

lo  infemd  of  flame  olwajs  suggests  the  idea  of  heat.    It  is  simple 
^^  custom  then  that  determines  the  transition  from  the  one  to 

the  other,  or  renders  'necessary'  the  connection  between 
them.  In  order  that  the  transition,  however,  may  constitute 
an  inference  from  cause  to  effect  (or  vice  versd)^  one  of  the 
two  objects  thus  naturally  related,  but  not  both,  must  be 
presented  as  an  impression.  If  both  were  impressions  it 
would  be  a  case  of  '  sensation,  not  reasoning ; '  if  both  were 
ideas,  no  belief  would  attend  the  transition.  This  brings 
us  to  the  question  as  to  the  '  nature  and  qualities '  of  the 
inferred  idea, 
e.  The  2')!.  *'TiB  evident  that  all  reasonings  from  causes  or  effects 

2Ju  idel*^  terminate  in  conclusions  concerning  matter  of  fact,  t.  e.  con- 
cerning the  existence  of  objects  or  of  their  qualities ' ; '  in 
other  words,  in  belief.  If  this  meant  a  new  idea,  an  idea 
that  we  have  not  previously  had,  it  would  follow  that  infer- 
ence could  really  carry  us  beyond  sense,  that  there  could  be 
an  idea  not  copied  from  any  prior  impression^  But  according 
to  Hume  it  does  not  mean  this.  '  The  idea  of  existence  is  the 
very  same  with  the  idea  of  what  we  conceive  to  be  existent ;  '* 
and  not  only  so,  *  the  belief  of  existence  joins  no  new  ideas  to 
those  which  compose  the  idea  of  the  object.  When  I  think 
of  God,  when  I  think  of  him  as  existent,  and  when  I  believe 
him  to  be  existent,  my  idea  of  him  neither  increases  nor 
diminishes.'  *  In  what  then  lies  the  difference  between  in* 
credulity  and  belief;  between  an  'idea  assented  to,'  or  an 
object  believed  to  exist,  and  a  fictitious  object  or  idea  from 
which  we  dissent  P  The  answer  is,  '  not  in  the  parts  or  com- 
position of  the  idea,  but  in  the  manner  of  conceiving  it,' 
which  must  be  understood  to  mean  the  manner  of  *  feeling ' 
it;  and  this  difference  is  further  explained  to  lie  in  Hhe  su- 
perior force,  or  vivacity,  or  steadiness '  with  which  it  is  felt/ 
We  are  thus  brought  to  the  farther  question,  how  it  is  that 
this  *  superior  vivacity '  belongs  to  the  inferred  idea  when 
we  '  reason '  from  cause  to  effect  or  from  effect  to  cause. 
The  answer  here  is  that  the  *  impression  of  the  memory  or 
senses,'  which  in  virtue  of  a  '  natural  relation '  suggests  the 
idea,  also  '  communicates  to  it  a  share  of  its  force  or  vivacity.' 
It  results  292.  Thus  it  appears  that  in  order  to  the  conclusion  that 
that  neces-  g^^y  particular  cause  must  have  any  particular  effect,  there  is 

'  p.  394.  *  P.  398.    Gil  abore,  par.  170,  for 

'  P.  370.  the  coirespoodiiig  view  in  Berkalejr. 

•  P.  396. 


NECESSABY  CX)NNECnON  A  PROPENSITY.  247 

needed  first  the  presence  of  an  impression,  and  secondly  the  nection  ii 
joint  action  of  those  two  *  principles^  ofjmion  amongjdeag/  ^™f"*' 
resemblance  and  contignitT. .  Tnratueof  the  former  principle  reflection, 
the  given  impression  calls  up  the  image  of  a  like  impression  i-«»  *  P"*" 
previously  experienced,  which  again  in  virtue  of  the  latter  the  traM- 
calls  up  the  image  of  its  usual  attendant,  and  the  liveliness  ^*'°'^.^, 
of  the  given  impression  so  communicates  itself  to  the  recalled 
ideas  as  to  constitute  belief  in  their  existence.     If  this  is  the 
true  account  of  the  matter,  the  question  as  to  the  nature  of 
necessary  connexion  has  answered  itself*    *The  necessary 
connexion  betwixt  causes  and  effects  is  the  foundation  of  our 
inference  from  one  to  the  other.     The  foundation  of  the  in- 
ference is  the  transition  arising  from  the  accustomed  union. 
These  are  therefore  the  same.^ '      We  may  thus  understand 
how  it  is  that  there  seems  to  be  an  idea  of  such  connexion  to 
which  no  impression  of  the  senses,  or  (to  use  an  equivalent 
phrase  of  Hume's)  no  *  quality  in  objects '  corresponds.     If 
the  first  presentation  of  two  objects,  of  which  one  is  cause, 
the  other  effect,  (i.  e.  of  which  we  afterwards  come  to  con- 
sider one  the  cause,  the  other  the  effect)  gives  no  idea  of  a 
connexion  between  them,  as  it  clearly  does  not,  neither  can 
it  do  so  however  often  repeated.     It  would  not  do  so,  unless 
the  repetition  *  either  discovered  or  produced  something  new  * 
in  the  objects ;  and  it  does  neither.     But  it  does  *  produce  a 
new  impression  in  the  mind.*     After  observing  a  *  constant 
conjunction  of  the  objects,  and  an  uninterrupted  resemblance 
of  their  relations  of  contiguity  and  succession,  we  immedi- 
ately feel  a  determination  of  the  mind  to  pass  from  one  of 
the  objects  to  its  usual  attendant,  and  to  conceive  it  in  a 
stronger  light  on  account  of  that  relation.'    It  is  of  this 
Jmpression,'  this  *  propensity  which  custom  pro- 
duces,' thaTffieiSea  of  necessary  connexion  is  the  copy.' 

293.  The  sequence  of  ideas,  which  thispropensity  deter-  The  tranfe- 
mines,  clearly  does  not  involve  any  inference  *  beyond  sense,'  j^^^^jj^^*^ 
'  from  the  known  to  the  unknown,'  ^  from  instances  of  which  beyond 
we  have  had  experience,  to  those  of  which  we  have  had  none,'  ^®'"®« 
any  more  than  does  any  other  *  recurrence  of  an  idea ' — which, 
as  we  have  seen,  merely  means,  according  to  Hume,  the  re- 
turn of  a  feeling  at  a  lower  level  of  intensity  after  it  has  been 
felt  at  a  higher.     The  idea  which  we  speak  of  as  an  inferred 
cause  or  effect  is  only  an  ^  instance  of  which  we  have  no  ex- 

»  P.  460.  »  Pp.  457-460. 


248  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

perieBoe '  in  the  sense  of  being  numericaUy  differmJt  from  tlie 
similar  ideas,  whose  previous  constant  association  with  an 
impression  like  the  given  one,  determines  the  '  inference ; ' 
bat  in  the  same  sense  the  *  impression '  which  I  now  feel  on 
putting  my  hand  to  the  fire  is  different  from  the  impressions 
previously  felt  under  the  same  circumstances,  and  I  do  not 
for  that  reason  speak  of  this  impression  as  an  instance  of 
which  I  have  had  no  experience.  Thus  Hume,  though  re- 
taining the  received  phraseology  in  reference  to  the  '  conclu- 
sion from  any  particular  cause  to  any  particular  effect ' — 
phraseology  which  implies  that  prior  to  the  inference  the 
object  inferred  is  in  some  sense  unknown  or  unexperienced — 
yet  deprives  it  of  meaning  by  a  doctrine  which  makes  infer- 
ence, as  he  himself  puts  it,  ^  a  species  of  sensation,' '  an  un- 
intelligible instinct  of  our  souls,'  '  more  properly  an  act  of 
the  sensitive  than  of  the  cogitative  part  of  our  natures ' ' — 
which  in  tsjct  leaves  no  ^  part  of  our  natures '  to  be  cogitative 
at  alL 
Nor  d0ter>  294.  We  are  not  entitied  then,  it  would  seem,  to  say  that  any 
mined  by  inference  to  matter  of  fact,  any  proof  of  an  ^instructive  pro- 
objecHye  position,' — as  distinct  from  tiie  conclusion  of  a  syllogism, 
relAtiou.  which  is  simply  derived  from  the  analysis  of  a  proposition 
already  conceded, — ^rests  on  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect. 
Such  language  implies  that  the  relation  is  other  than  the 
jgtCTence,  whereas,  in  fact,  they  are  one  and  the  same,  each 
being  merely  a  particular  sort  of  sequence  of  feeling  upon 
feeling — that  sort  of  which  the  characteristic  is  that,  when 
the  former  feeling  only  has  the  maximum  of  vivacity,  it  still, 
owing  to  the  frequency  with  which  it  has  been  attended  by  the 
other,  imparts  to  it  a  large,  though  less,  amount  of  vivacity. 
This  is  the  naked  result  to  which  Hume's  doctrine  leads — a 
result  which,  thus  put,  might  have  set  men  upon  reconsidering 
the  first  principles  of  the  Lockeian  philosophy.  But  he  wished 
to  find  acceptance,  and  would  not  so  put  it.  A  consider- 
ation of  the  points  in  which  he  had  to  sacrifice  consistency 
to  plausibility — since  he  was  always  consistent  where  he  de- 
centiy  could  be — will  lead  us  to  the  true  aXriov  rov  ^n;Sot)», 
the  impossibility  on  his  principles  of  explaining  the  world 
of  knowledge. 
Deflnitioni  295.  As  the  outcome  of  his  doctrine,  he  submits  two 
of  wue.     definitions  of  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect.    Considering 

1  Pp.  404,  475.  and  471. 


CAUSE  AS  'PHILOSOPHICAL  RELATION/  249 

it  as  '  a  philosophical  relation  or  comparisoii  of  two  ideas^  a.  Ab  a 
"we  may  define  a  cause  to  be  an  object  precedent  and  con-  *  ^^^f^ 
tigaous  to  another,  and  where  all  objects  resembling  the  reUtiom 
former  are  placed  in  like  relations  of  precedencj  and  con- 
tiguity to  those  objects  that  resemble  the  latter.'    Consider- 
ing the  relation  as  ^a  natwral  one,  or  as  an  association 
between  ideas^'  we  may  say  that  *a  cause  is  an  object 
precedent  and  contiguous  to  another,  and  so  united  with  it 
that  the  idea  of  one  determines  the  mind  to  form  the  idea 
of  the  other,  and  the  impression  of  the  one  to  form  a  more 
lively  idea  of  the  other/  * 

296.  Our  first  enquiry  must  be  how  far  these  definitions  la  Hume 
are  really  consistent  with  the  theory  firom  which  they  are  ^^^  ^ 
derived.    At  the  outset,  it  is  a  surprise  to  find  that  the  *phiio- 
*  philosophical  relation '  of  cause  and  e£fect,  as  distinct  from  •optical' 

.  r^  J         1  1       n      J  -ii  1  .  «      -I  relations 

the  natural  one,  should  still  appear  to  survive.  Such  a  asdlBtinct 
distinction  has  no  meaning  unless  it  implies  a  conceived  f^°^ 
relation  of  objects  other  than  the  de  facto  sequence  of 
feelings,  of  which  one  *  naturally '  introduces  the  other.  It 
is  the  characteristic  of  Locke's  doctrine  of  knowledge  that 
in  it  this  distinction  is  still  latent.  His  language  constantly 
implies  that  knowledge,  as  a  perception  of  relations,  is  other 
than  the  sequence  of  feelings ;  but  by  confining  his  view 
chiefiy  to  relation  in  the  way  of  likeness  and  unlikeness — a 
relation  that  exists  between  feelings  merely  as  felt,  or  as  they 
are  for  the  feeling  consciousness — he  avoids  the  necessity  of 
deciding  what  the  '  ideas  '  are  in  the  connection  of  which 
knowledge  and  reasoning  consist,  whether  objects  consti- 
tuted by  conceived  relations  or  feelings  suggestive  of  each 
other.  But  when  once  attention  had  been  fixed,  as  it  was 
by  Hume,  on  an  ostensible  relation  between  objects,  like 
that  of  cause  and  effect,  which,  if  it  exist  at  all,  is  clearly  not 
one  in  the  way  of  resemblance  between  feelings,  the  distinc- 
tion spoken  of  becomes  patent.  If  the  colour  red  had  not  the 
likeness  and  unlikeness  which  it  has  to  the  colour  blue,  the 
colours  would  be  different  feelings  from  what  they  are ;  but 
if  the  flame  of  fire  and  its  heat  were  not  regarded  severally  as 
cause  and  effect,  it  would  make  no  difference  to  them  as 
feelings ;  or,  to  put  it  conversely,  it  is  not  upon  any  com- 
parison of  two  feelings  with  each  other  that  we  regard  them 
as  related  in  the  way  of  cause  and  effect.    In  what  seuse 

>  P.  464. 


S60 


GENERAL  mTBODUCTIOlC. 


ISzaminar 
tion  of 
Hume's 
language 
about 


Philo- 
sophical 
relation 
consists  in 
a  com- 
parison, 
but  no 
com- 
parison 
between 
cause  and 
eflsctk 


ihen  can  the  relation  between,  flame  and  heat  be  a  philo- 
sophical relation,  as  defined  by  Hnme — ^a  relation  in  Tirtae 
of  which  we  compare  objects,  or  an  idea  that  we  acqnire 
upon  comparison  9 

297.  This  definition,  indeed,  is  not  stated  so  exactly  or  so 
nniformly  as  might  be  wished.  In  different  passages  ^philo- 
sophical relation '  appears  as  that  in  respect  of  which  we 
compare  any  two  ideas ;  as  that  of  whicdi  we  acqnire  the 
idea  by  comparing  objects,'  and  finally  (in  the  context  of  the 
passage  last  quoted)  as  itself  the  comparison.*  The  real 
source  of  this  ambiguity  lies  in  that  impossibiliiy  of  regard- 
ing an  object  as  anything  apart  from  its  relations,  which 
compels  any  theory  that  does  not  recognize  it  to  be  incon- 
sistent with  itself.  It  is  Locke's  cardinal  doctrine  that  real 
*  objects  *  are  first  given  as  simple  ideas,  and  that  their 
relations,  unreal  in  contrast  with  the  simple  ideas,  are 
superinduced  by  the  mind — a  doctrine  which  Hume  com- 
pletes by  excluding  all  ideas  that  are  not  either  copies  of 
simple  feelings  or  compounds  of  these,  and  by  consequence 
ideas  of  relation  altogether.  The  three  statements  of  the 
nature  of  philosophical  relation,  given  above,  mark  three 
stages  of  departure  from,  or  approach  to,  consistency  with 
this  doctrine.  The  first,  implying  as  it  does  that  relation  is 
not  merely  a  subjective  result  in  our  minds  from  the  com- 
parison of  ideas,  but  belongs  to  the  ideas  themselves,  is  most 
obviously  inconsistent  with  it  according  to  the  form  in  which 
it  is  presented  by  Locke ;  but  the  second  is  equally  incom- 
patible with  Hume's  completion  of  the  doctrine,  for  it  implies 
that  we  so  compare  ideas  as  to  acquire  an  idea  of  relation 
other  than  the  ideas  put  together — an  idea  at  once  open  to 
Hume's  own  challenge,  ^  Is  it  a  colour,  sound,  smell,  &c.;  or 
is  it  a  passion  or  emotion  P ' 

298.  We  are  thus  brought  to  the  third  statement,  ac- 
cording to  which  philosophical  relation,  instead  of  being 
an  idea  acquired  upon  comparison,  is  itself  the  compari- 
son. A  comparison  of  ideas  may  seem  not  far  removed 
from  the  simple  sequence  of  resembling  ideas ;  but  if  we 
examine  the  definition  of  cause,  as  stated  above,  which 
with  Hume  corresponds  to  the  view  of  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect  as  a  ^  pMlosophical '  one,  we  find  that  the  relation 
in  question  is  neither  a  comparison  of  the  related  objects 

»  Cf.  Part  I.  6.  »  P.  464. 


OOMPAEISON  OF  PAST  AND  PRESENT  SEQUENCE.      261 

nor  an  idea  which  arises  upon  such  comparison.    According  i 

to  his  statement  a  comparison  is  indeed  necessary  to  give  ns 
an  idea  of  the  relation — a  comparison,  however,  not  of 
the  objects  which  we  reckon  severally  cause  and  effect  with 
each  other,  but  (a)  of  each  of  the  two  objects  with  other  | 

like  objects,  and  {h)  of  the  relation  of  precedency  and  con-  -I 

tiguity  between  the  two  objects  with  that  previously  observed  ' 

between  the  like  objects.     Now,  unless  the  idea  of  relation  I 

between  objects  in  the  way  of  cause  and  effect  is  one  that  I 

consists  in,  or  is  acquired  by,  comparison  of  those  oljects,  the  I 

fiEU^  that  another  sort  of  comparison  is  necessary  to  consti- 
tute it  does  not  touch  the  question  of  its  possibility.  How- 
ever we  come  to  have  it,  however  reducible  to  impressions 
the  objects  may  be,  it  is  not  only  other  than  the  idea  of 
either  object  taken  singly ;  it  is  not,  as  an  idea  of  resem- 
blance might  be  supposed  to  be,  constituted  by  the  joint 
presence  or  immediate  sequence  upon  each  other  of  the 
objects.  Here,  then,  is  an  idea  which  is  not  taken  either 
from  an  impression  or  from  a  compound  of  impressions  (if 
such  composition  be  possible),  and  this  idea  is  '  the  source  of 
all  our  reasonings  concerning  matters  of  fact.' 

299.  The  modem  followers  of  Hume  may  perhaps  seek  rphe  oom- 
refuge  in  the  consideration  that  though  the  relation  of  cause  parison  U 
and  effect  between  objects  is  not  one  in  the  way  of  resem-  ^Jj^ 
blance  or  one  of  which  the  idea  is  given  by  comparison  of  the  and  pMi 
objects,  it  yet  results  from  comparisons,  which  may  be  sup-  ^^^j^ 
posed  to  act  like  chemical  substances  whose  combination  sion  of  ob- 
produces  a  substance  with  properties  quite  different  from  J^^* 
those  of  the  combined  substances,  whether  taken  separately 
or  together.     Some  anticipation  of  such  a  solution,  it  may  be 
said,  we  find  in  Hume  himself,  who  is  aware  that  from  the 
repetition  of  impressions  of  seuse  and  their  ideas  new,  hetero- 
geneous, impressions — ^those  of  *  reflection  * — are  formed.    Of 
this  more  will  be  said  when  we  come  to  Hume's  treatment  of 
cause  and  effect  as  a  'natural  relation.'     For  the  present  we 
have  to  enquire  what  exactly  is  implied  in  the  comparisons 
from  which  this  heterogeneous  idea  of  relation  is  derived. 
If  we  look  closely  we  shall  find  that  they  presuppose  a  con- 
sciousness of  relations  as  little  reducible  to  resemblance,  i.  e. 
as  little  the  result  of  comparison,  as  that  of  cause  and  effect 
itself.    It  has  been  already  noticed  how  Hume  treats  the 
judgment  of  proportion  between  figures  as  a  mere  affair  of 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Obserra- 
tion  of 
Baccession 
already 
goes  be- 
yond sense. 


sense,  because  such  relation  depends  entirely  on  the  ideas 
compared,  without  reflecting  that  the  existence  of  the  figures 
presupposes  those  relations  of  space  to  which,  because  (as  he 
admits)  they  do  not  depend  on  the  comparison  of  ideas,  the 
only  excuse  for  reckoning  any  relation  sensible  does  not  ap* 
ply.  In  the  same  way  he  contents  himself  with  the  fact  that 
the  judgment  of  cause  and  effect  implies  a  comparison  of 
present  with  past  experience,  and  may  thus  be  brought  under 
his  definition  of  ^  philosophical  relation,'  without  observing 
that  the  experiences  compared  are  themselves  by  no  means 
reducible  to  comparison.  We  judge  that  an  object,  which 
we  now  find  to  be  precedent  and  contiguous  to  another,  is  its 
cause  when,  comparing  present  experience  with  past,  we  find 
that  it  always  has  been  so.  That  in  effect  is  Hume's  account 
of  the  relation,  ^  considered  as  a  philosophical  one : '  and  it 
implies  that  the  constitution  of  the  several  experiences  com* 
pared  involves  two  sorts  of  relation  which  Hume  admits  not 
to  be  derived  from  comparison,  (a)  relation  in  time  and  place, 
(6)  relation  in  the  way  of  identity. 

800.  As  to  relations  in  time  and  space,  we  have  already 
traced  out  the  inconsistencies  which  attend  Hume's  attempt 
to  represent  them  as  compound  ideas.  The  statement  at  the 
beginning  of  Part  iii.,  that  they  are  relations  not  dependent 
on  the  nature  of  compared  ideas,  is  itself  a  confession  that 
such  representation  is  erroneous.  If  the  difficulty  about  the 
synthesis  of  successive  feelings  in  a  consciousness  that  con- 
sists merely  of  the  succession  could  be  overcome,  we  might 
admit  that  the  putting  together  of  ideas  might  constitute 
such  an  idea  of  relation  as  depends  on  the  nature  of  the  com* 
bined  ideas.  But  no  combination  of  ideas  can  yield  a  relation 
which  remains  the  same  while  the  ideas  change,  and  changes 
while  they  remain  the  same.  Thus,  when  Hume  tells  us  that 
*  in  none  of  the  observations  we  may  make  concerning  rela- 
tions of  time  and  place  can  the  mind  go  beyond  what  is 
immediately  present  to  the  senses,  to  discover  the  relations 
of  objects,'  ^  the  statement  contradicts  itself.  Either  we  can 
make  no  observation  concerning  relation  in  time  and  place 
at  aU,  or  in  making  it  we  already  ^  go  beyond  what  is  im- 
mediately present  to  the  senses,'  since  we  observe  what  is 
neither  a  feeling  nor  several  feelings  put  together.  If  then 
Hume  had  succeeded  in  his  reduction  of  reasoning  from 

>  P.  376. 


SUCH  CX)MPARISON  IMPLIES  IDENTITY.  253 

caase  or  effect  to  obseryation  of  this  kind,  as  modified  in  a 
certain  way  by  habit,  the  purpose  for  which  the  reduction  is 
attempted  would  not  have  been  attained.  The  separation 
between  perception  and  inference,  between  *  intuition '  and 
*  discourse,*  would  have  been  got  rid  of,  but  inference  and 
discourse  would  not  therefore  have  been  brought  nearer  to 
the  mere  succession  of  feelings,  for  the  separation  between 
feeling  and  perception  would  remain  complete;  and  that 
being  so,  the  question  would  inevitably  recur — If  the  *  obser- 
vation' of  objects  as  related  in  space  and  time  already 
involves  a  transition  from  the  felt  to  the  unfelt,  what  greater 
difficulty  is  there  about  the  interpretation  of  a  feeling  as  a 
change  to  be  accounted  for  (which  is  what  is  meant  by  infer- 
ence to  a  cause),  that  we  should  do  violence  to  the  sciences 
by  reducing  it  to  repeated  observation  lest  it  should  seem 
that  in  it  we  *  go  beyond '  present  feeling? 

801.  Belation  in  the  way  of  identity  is  treated  by  Hume  ABalso 
in  the  third  part  of  the  Treatise*  pretty  much  as  he  treats  f^  ^« 
contiguity  and  distance.     He  admits  that  it  does  not  depend  tion  con- 
on  the  nature  of  any  ideas  so  related — in  other  words,  that  c&mmg  ^ 
it  is  not  constituted  by  feelings  as  they  would  be  for  a  merely  \rhUAi  tU 
feeling  consciousness — ^yet  he  denies  that  the  mind  *  in  any  co»a.- 
observations  we  may  make  concerning  it'  can  go  beyond  f^l^JJi, 
what  is  immediately  present  to  the  senses.    Directly  after- 
wards, however,  we  find  that  there  is  a  judgment  of  identity 
which  involves  a  *  conclusion  beyond  the  impressions  of  our 
taenses ' — ^the  judgment,  namely,  that  an  object  of  which  the 
perception  is  interrupted  continues  individually  the  same 
notwithstanding  the  interruption.     Such  a  judgment,  we  are 
told,  is  a  supposition  founded  only  on  the  connection  of  cause 
and  effect.     How  any  *  observation  concerning  identity  *  can 
be  made  without  it  is  not  there  explained,  and,  pending  such 
explanation,  observations  concerning  identity  are  freely  taken 
for  granted  as  elements  given  by  sense  in  the  experience 
from  which  the  judgment  of  cause  and  effect  is  derived.    In 
the  second  chapter  of  Part  iv.,  however,  where  *  belief  in 
an  external  world '  first  comes  to  be  explicitly  discussed  by 
Hume,  we  find  that  ^  propensities  to  feign  ^  are  as  necessary 
to  account  for  the  judgment  of  identity  as  for  that  of  ne- 
cessary connection.    If  that  chapter  had  preceded,  instead  of 
following,  the  theory  of  cause  and  effect  as  given  in  Part  in., 

>  p.  376. 


854 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Identitj  of 
objects  an 
unavoid- 
able cniz 
for  Home. 


His  ac- 
count of  it 


the  latter  would  have  seemed  much  less  plain  sailing  than 
to  most  readers  it  has  done.  It  is  probably  because  nothing 
corresponding  to  it  appears  in  that  later  redaction  of  his 
theory  by  which  Hume  sought  popular  acceptance,  that  the 
true  suggestiveness  of  his  speci:dation  was  ignored,  and  the 
scepticism,  which  awakened  Eant,  reduced  to  the  common- 
places of  inductive  logic.  To  examine  its  purport  is  the  next 
step  to  be  taken  in  the  process  of  testing  the  possibility  of  a 
*  natural  history  *  of  knowledge.  Its  bearing  on  the  doctrine 
of  cause  will  appear  as  we  proceed. 

802.  The  problem  of  identity  necessarily  arises  &om  the 
fusion  of  reality  and  feeling.  We  must  once  again  recall 
the  propositions  in  which  Hume  represents  this  fusion — that 
'  everything  which  enters  the  mind  is  both  in  reality  and 
appearance  as  the  perception;'  that  'so  far  as  the  senses 
are  judges,  all  perceptions  are  the  same  in  the  manner  of 
their  existence ; '  that 'perceptions'  are  either  impressions, 
or  ideas  which  are  '  fainter  impressions ; '  and  '  impressions 
are  internal  and  perishing  existences,  and  appear  as  such.' 
If  these  propositions  are  true — and  the  '  new  way  of  ideas ' 
inevitably  leads  to  them — ^how  is  it  that  we  believe  in  *  a  con- 
timied  existence  of  objects  even  when  they  are  not  present  to 
the  senses,'  and  an  existence  '  distinct  from  the  mind  and 
perception'?  They  are  the  same  questions  from  which 
Berkeley  derived  his  demonstration  of  an  eternal  mind — a 
demonstration  premature  because,  till  the  doctrine  of  *  ideas,' 
and  of  mind  as  their  subject,  had  been  definitely  altered  in  a 
way  that  Berkeley  did  not  attempt,  it  was  explaining  a  belief 
difficult  to  account  for  by  one  wholly  unaccountable.  Before 
Theism  could  be  exhibited  with  the  necessity  which  Locke 
claimed  for  it,  it  was  requisite  to  try  what  could  be  done 
with  association  of  ideas  and  'propensities  to  feign*  in  the 
way  of  accounting  for  the  world  of  knowledge,  in  order  that 
upon  their  failure  another  point  of  departure  than  Locke's 
might  be  found  necessary.  The  experiment  was  made  by 
Hume.  He  has  the  merit,  to  begin  with,  of  stating  the 
nature  of  identity  with  a  precision  which  we  found  wanting 
in  Locke.  '  In  that  proposition,  an  object  is  the  same  ivith 
itself,  if  the  idea  expressed  by  the  word  object  were  no  ways 
distinguished  from  that  meant  by  itself,  we  really  should 
mean  nothing.'  '  On  the  other  hand,  a  multiplicity  of  objects 
can  never  convey  the  idea  of  identity,  however  resenbling 


HUME'S  ACCOUNT  OF  IDENTITY.  255 

they  may  'be  supposed.  •  .  .  Since  then  both  number 
and  xmity  are  incompatible  with  the  relation  of  identity,  it 
must  lie  in  something  that  is  neither  of  them.  But  at  first 
sight  this  seems  impossible.'  The  explanation  is  that  when 
^  we  say  that  an  object  is  the  same  with  itself,  we  mean  that 
the  object  existent  at  one  time  is  the  same  with  itself  existent 
at  another.  By  this  means  we  make  a  difference  betwixt  the 
idea  meant  by  the  word  object  and  that  meant  by  itself  with- 
out going  the  length  of  number,  and  at  the  same  time  with* 
out  restraining  ourselves  to  a  strict  and  absolute  unity.'  In 
other  words,  identity  means  the  unity  of  a  thing  through  a 
multiplicity  of  times ;  or,  as  Hume  puts  it,  '  the  inyariable- 
ness  and  uninterruptedness  of  any  object  through  a  supposed 

variation  of  time. '  *  ^/ 

303.  Now  that '  an  object  exists  ^  can  with  Hume  mean  nOHEVoperlj 
more  than  that  an  *  impression  *  is  felt,  and  without  sue-  7^^  ^*™ 
cession  of  feelings  according  to  him  there  is  no  time.'    It  fiction,  in 
follows  that  unity  in  the  existence  of  the  object,  being  in-  *^®  ^^^ 
compatible  with  sticcession  of  feelings,  is  incompatible  also  haye  no 
with  existence  in  time.      Either  then  the  unity  of  the  object  snch  idea. 
or  its  existence  at  manifold  times—both  being  involved  in 
the  conception  of  identity — ^must  be  a  fiction ;  and  since  '  all 
impressions  are  perishing  existences,'  perishing  vrith  a  turn 
of  the  head  or  the  eyes,  it  cannot  be  doubted  which  it  is  that 
is  the  fiction.    That  the  existence  of  an  object,  which  we 
call  the  same  with  itself,  is  broken  by  as  many  intervals  of 
time  as  there  are  successive  and  diflFerent,  however  resembling, 

*  perceptions,'  must  be  the  fact ;  that  it  should  yet  be  one 
throughout  the-  intervals  is  a  fiction  to  be  accounted  for. 
Hume  accounts  for  it  by  supposing  that  when  the  separate 

*  perceptions '  have  a  strong  *  natural  relation '  to  each  other 
in  the  way  of  resemblance,  the  transition  from  one  to  the 
other  is  so  ^  smooth  and  easy '  that  we  are  apt  to  take  it  for 
the  *  same  disposition  of  mind  with  which  we  consider  one 
constant  and  uninterrupted  perception ; '  and  that,  as  a  con- 
sequence of  this  mistake,  we  make  the  farther  one  of  taking 
the  successive  resembling  perceptions  for  an  identical,  i.e. 
uninterrupted  as  well  as  invariable  object.*  But  we  cannot  Yet  he  im 
mistake  one  object  for  another  unless  we  have  an  idea  of  that  pl***  ^^^ 
other  object.     If  then  we  *  mistake  the  succession  of  our  ^chidea, 

'  Pp.  489,  490.  perceptions,  we  have  no  notion  of  time.* 

*  •  Wherever  we  have  no  snccessive      (p.  342).  •  P.  492. 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


ID  sajiDg 
that  we 
mistake 
eomething 
ttlseforit. 


Succession 
of  like 
feelings 
mistaken 
for  an 
idenfical 
object :  but 
the 

feelings,  as 
described, 
are  already 
such 
objects. 


interrupted  perceptions  for  an  identical  object,'  it  follows 
that  we  have  an  idea  of  such  an  object— of  a  thing  one  with 
itself  throughout  the  succession  of  impressions — an  idea 
which  can  be  a  copy  neither  of  any  one  of  the  impressions 
nor,  even  if  successive  impressions  could  put  themselves 
together,  of  all  so  put  together.  Such  an  idea  being  accord- 
ing to  Hume's  principles  impossible,  the  appearance  of  our 
having  it  was  the  fiction  he  had  to  account  for ;  and  he  ac- 
counts for  it,  as  we  find,  by  a  ^  habit  of  mind '  which  already 
presupposes  it.  His  procedure  here  is  just  the  same  as  in 
dealing  with  the  idea  of  vacuum.  In  that  case,  as  we  saw, 
having  to  account  for  the  appearance  of  there  being  the  im- 
possible idea  of  pure  space,  he  does  so  by  showing,  that  having 
*  an  idea  of  distance  not  filled  with  any  coloured  or  tangible 
object,'  we  mistake  this  for  an  idea  of  extension,  and  hence 
suppose  that  the  latter  may  be  invisible  and  intangible.  He 
thus  admits  an  idea,  virtually  the  same  with  the  one  ex- 
cluded, as  the  source  of  the  *  tendency  to  suppose '  which  is 
to  replace  the  excluded  idea.  So  in  his  account  of  identity. 
Either  the  habit,  in  virtue  of  which  we  convert  resembling 
perceptions  into  an  identical  object,  is  what  Hume  admits  to 
be  a  contradiction,  'a  habit  acquired  by  what  was  never 
present  to  the  mind ; ' '  or  the  idea  of  identity  must  be  present 
toihe  mind  in  order  to  render  the  habit  possible. 

304.  The  device  by  which  this  petitio  prindpii  is  covered 
is  one  already  familiar  to  us  in  Hume.  In  this  case  it  is  so 
palpable  that  it  is  difficult  to  believe  he  was  unconscious  of 
it.  As  he  has  *  to  account  for  the  belief  of  the  vulgar  with 
regard  to  the  existence  of  body,'  he  will  *  entirely  conform 
himself  to  their  manner  of  thinking  and  expressing  them- 
selves ; '  in  other  words,  he  will  assume  the  fiction  in  question 
a«  the  beginning  of  a  process  by  which  its  formation  is  to  be 
accounted  for.  The  vulgar  make  no  distinction  between 
thing  and  appearance.  *  Those  very  sensations  which  enter 
by  the  eye  or  ear  are  with  them  the  true  objects,  nor  can  they 
readily  conceive  that  this  pen  or  this  paper,  which  is  im- 
mediately perceived,  represents  another  which  is  different 
from,  but  resembling  it.  In  order  therefore  to  accommodate 
myself  to  their  notions,  I  shall  at  first  suppose  that  there  is 
only  a  single  existence,  which  I  shall  call  indifferently  object 
ajid  perception,  according  as  it  shall  seem  best  tp  suit  my 

>  P.  487. 


INDIVIDUAL  OBJECTS  ALREADY  *  FICTITIOUS;        267 

purpose,  understanding  by  both  of  them  what  any  common 
man  may  mean  by  a  hat,  or  shoe,  or  stone,  or  any  other  im- 
pression conveyed  to  him  by  his  senses/  ^  Now  it  is  of  course 
true  that  the  vulgar  are  innocent  of  the  doctrine  of  repre- 
sentative ideas.  They  do  not  suppose  that  this  pen  or  this 
paper,  which  is  immediately  perceived,  represents  another 
which  is  difiPerent  from,  but  resembling,  it;  but  neither  do 
they  suppose  that  this  pen  or  this  paper  is  a  sensation.  It 
is  the  intellectual  transition  from  this,  that,  and  the  other  suc- 
cessive sensations  to  this  pen  or  this  paper,  as  the  identical 
object  to  which  the  sensations  are  referred  as  qualities,  that 
is  unaccountable  if,  according  to  Hume's  doctrine,  the  suc- 
cession of  feelings  constitutes  our  consciousness.  In  the  pas- 
sage quoted  he  quietly  ignores  it,  covering  his  own  reduction 
of  felt  thing  to  feeling  under  the  popular  identification  of 
the  real  thing  with  the  perceived.  With  *  the  vulgar '  that 
which  is  *  immediately  perceived  *  is  the  real  thing,  just  be- 
cause it  is  not  the  mere  feeling  which  with  Hume  it  is.  But 
under  pretence  of  provisionally  adopting  the  vulgar  view,  he 
entitles  himself  to  treat  the  mere  feeling,  because  according 
to  him  it  is  that  which  is  immediately  perceived,  as  if  it  were 
the  permanent  identical  thing,  which  according  to  the  vulgar 
is  what  is  immediately  perceived. 

305.  Thus  without  professedly  admitting  into  conscious-  Fiction  of 
ness  anything  but  the  succession  of  feelings  he  gets  such  in-  j^®°M^y_ 
dividual  objects  as  Locke  would  have  called  objects  of  ^  actual  piied  as 
present  sensation.'    When  *  I  survey  the  furniture  of  my  »?«^®  ^f 
chamber,'  according  to  him,  I  see  sundry  *  identical  objects ' —  peL^ty" 
this  chair,  this  table,  this  inkstand,  &c.*    So  fiir  there  is  no  ▼Wch  is  to 
fiction  to  be  accounted  for.    It  is  only  when,  having  left  my  ^^^  ^ 
chamber  for  an  interval  and  returned  to  it,  I  suppose  the 
objects  which  I  see  to  be  identical  with  those  I  saw  before, 
that  the  '  propensity  to  feign '  comes  into  play,  which  has  to 
be  explained  as  above.     But  in  fact  the  original  ^survey' 
during  which,  seeing  the  objects,  I  suppose  them  to  continue 
the  same  with  themselves,  involves  precisely  the  same  fiction. 
In  that  case,  says  Hume,  I  *  suppose  the  change '  (which  is  ne- 
cessary to  constitute  the  idea  of  identity)  ^  to  lie  only  in  the 
time.'    But  without  *  succession   of  perceptions,'  difiPerent 
however  resembling,  there  could  according  to  him  be  no 
change  of  time.    The  continuous  survey  of  this  table,  or  this 

•P.  491.  ^^^^i^ii^HA^ 

VOL.1.  8      ftTNl-El 


or  y 


258 


GENERAL  INTBODUCIION. 


With 
Hame 
continued 
existence 
of  per- 
ceptions 
a  fiction 
different 
from  their 
identitj. 


chair,  then,  inTolres  the  notion  of  its  remaining  the  same 
with  itself  thionghout  a  saccession  of  different  perceptions — 
i.e.  the  foil-grown  fiction  of  identity — jnst  as  much  as  does 
the  supposition  that  the  table  I  see  now  is  identical  with  the 
one  I  saw  before.  The  '  realitj/  confusion  with  which  of  *  a 
smooth  passage  along  resembling  ideas  *  is  supposed  to  con- 
stitute the  *  fiction/  is  already  itself  the  fiction — ^the  fiction 
of  an  object  which  must  be  other  than  our  feelings,  since  it 
is  permanent  while  they  are  successire,  yet  so  related  to  them 
that  in  yirtue  of  reference  to  it,  instead  of  being  merely  differ- 
ent from  each  other,  they  become  changes  of  a  thing. 

306.  Having  thus  in  effect  imported  all  three  ^  fictions  of 
imagination  ' — identity,  continued  existence,  and  existence 
distinct  from  perception — into  the  original  'perception,* 
Hume,  we  may  think,  might  have  saved  himself  the  trouble 
of  treating  tiiem  as  separate  and  successive  formations. 
Unless  he  had  so  treated  them,  however,  his  'natural 
history '  of  consciousness  would  have  been  tax  less  imposing 
than  it  is.  The  device,  by  which  he  represents  the  '  vulgar ' 
belief  in  the  reality  of  the  felt  thing  as  a  belief  that  the 
mere  feeling  is  the  real  object,  enables  him  also  to  represent 
the  identity,  which  a  smooth  transition  along  closely  resem- 
bling sensations  leads  us  to  suppose,  as  still  merely  identity  of 
2kperc^iion.  *  The  very  image  which  is  present  to  the  senses 
is  with  us  the  real  body;  and  'tis  to  these  interrupted  images 
we  ascribe  a  perfect  identity.'  *  The  identity  lying  thus  in 
the  images  or  appearances,  not  in  anything  to  which  they 
are  referred,  a  further  fiction  seems  to  be  required  by  which 
we  may  overcome  the  contradiction  between  the  interruption 
of  the  appearances  and  their  identity — ^the  fiction  of  'a  con- 
tinued being  which  may  'fill  the  intervals '  between  the 
appearances.'  That  a  '  propension '  towards  such  a  fiction 
would  naturally  arise  firom  the  uneasiness  caused  by  such  a 
contradiction^  we  may  readily  admit.  The  question  is  how 
the  propension  can  be  satisfied  by  a  supposition  which  is 
merely  another  expression  for  one  of  the  contradictory 
beliefs.  What  difference  is  there  between  the  appearance 
of  a  perception  and  its  existence,  that  interruption  of  the 
perception,  though  incompatible  with  uninterruptedness  in 
its  appearance,  should  not  be  so  with  uninterruptedness  in 
its  existence  9    It  may  be  answered  that  there  is  just  the 

*  P.  493.  '  F^.  494,  49& 


HYPOTHESIS  OF  DOUBLE  EXISTENCE.  259 

difiPerence  between  relation  to  a  feeling  subject  and  relation  Can  per- 
to  a  thinking  one — between  relation  to  a  consciousness  g^^srwhen 
which  is  in  time,  or  successive,  and  relation  to  a  thinking  Qot  ppr- 
subject  which,  not  being  itself  in  time,  is  the  source  of  that  ceWed? 
determination  by  permanent  conditions,  which  is  what  is 
meant  bj  the  real  existence  of  a  perceived  thing.  But  to 
Home,  who  expressly  excludes  such  a  subject — with  whom 
4t  exists  '  =  *it  is  felt' — such  an  answer  is  inadmissible.  He 
can,  in  fact,  only  meet  the  difficulty  by  supposing  the  exist- 
ence of  unfelt  feelings,  of  unperceived  perceptions.  The 
appearance  of  a  perception  is  its  presence  to  ^  what  we  call 
a  mind,'  which  ^  is  nothing  but  a  heap  or  collection  of  dif- 
ferent perceptions,  united  together  by  certain  relations,  and 
supposed,  though  falsely,  to  be  endowed  with  a  perfect 
simplicity  and  identity.'  ^  To  consider  a  perception,  then, 
as  existing  though  not  appearing  is  merely  to  consider  it  as 
detached  from  this  *  heap '  of  other  perceptions,  which,  on 
Hume's  principle  that  whatever  is  distinguishable  is  separ- 
able, is  no  more  impossible  than  to  distinguish  one  percep- 
tion from  all  others.*  In  fact,  however,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
supposed  detaohment  is  the  very  opposite  of  such  distinction. 
A  perception  distinguished  from  all  others  is  determined  by 
that  distinction  in  the  fullest  possible  measure.  A  percep- 
tion detached  from  all  others,  left  out  of  the  ^heap  which  we 
call  a  mind,'  being  out  of  all  relation,  has  no  qualities — is 
simply  nothing.  We  can  no  more  *  consider '  it  than  we 
can  see  vacancy.  Yet  it  is  by  the  consideration  of  such 
nonentity,  by  supposing  a  world  of  unperceived  perceptions, 
of  *  existences '  without  relation  or  quality,  that  the  mind, 
according  to  Hume — ^itself  only  *  a  heap  of  perceptions ' — 
arrives  at  that  fiction  of  a  continued  being  which,  as  in- 
volved in  the  supposition  of  identity,  is  the  condition  of  our 
believing  in  a  world  of  real  things  at  all. 

S07.  It  is  implied,  then,  in  the  process  by  which,  accord-  Existence 
ing  to  Hume,  the  fiction  of  a  continued  being  is  arrived  at,  distinct^' 
that  this  being  is  supposed  to  be  not  only  continued  but  from  per- 
*  distinct  from  the  mind  '  and  '  independent '  of  it.     With  ^^  ^w*'  * 
Hume,  however,  the  supposition  of  a  distinct  and  ^  independ-  fiction stUL 
ent '  existence  of  the  perception  is  quite  different  from  that  of 
a  distinct  and  independent  object  other  than  the  perception. 
The  former  is  the  ^vulgar  hypothesis,'  and  though  a  fiction, 

■  P.  406.  «  Ibid. 

s2 


200 


GENERAJL  INTRODUCTION. 


Are  these 

■eToral 

•ficaons' 

really 

differeot 

from  each 

other? 


it  is  also  a  universal  belief:  the  latter  is  the  'philosophical 
hypothesis,'  which,  if  it  has  a  tendescj  to  obtain  belief  at 
all,  at  any  rate  derives  that  tendency,  in  other  words  *  ac- 
quires all  its  influence  over  the  imagination,'  from  the  vulgar 
one.^  Just  as  the  belief  in  the  independent  and  continued 
existence  of  perceptions  results  from  an  instinctive  effort 
to  escape  the  uneasiness,  caused  by  the  contradiction  between 
the  interruption  of  resembling  perceptions  and  their  imagined 
identity,  so  the  contradiction  between  this  belief  and  the 
evident  dependence  of  all  perceptions  *  on  our  organs  and  the 
disposition  of  our  nerves  and  animal  spirits '  leads  to  the  doc- 
trine of  representative  ideas  or  '  the  double  existence  of  per- 
ceptions and  objects.'  *  This  philosophical  system,  therefore,  is 
the  moDstrous  offspring  of  two  principles  which  are  contrary 
to  each  other,  which  are  both  at  once  embraced  by  the  mind 
and  which  are  unable  mutually  to  destroy  each  other.  The 
imagination  tells  us  that  our  resembling  perceptions  have  a 
continued  and  uninterrupted  existence,  and  are  not  anni- 
hilated by  their  absence.  Reflection  tells  us  that  even  our 
resembling  perceptions  are  interrupted  in  their  existence 
and  different  from  each  other.  The  contradiction  betwixt 
these  opinions  we  elude  by  a  new  fiction  which  is  conformable 
to  the  hypotheses  both  of  reflection  and  fiwicy,  by  ascribing 
these  contrary  qualities  to  different  existences;  the  inter- 
ruption to  perceptions,  and  the  continuance  to  objects  J  ^ 

808.  Here,  again,  we  find  that  the  contradictoiy  an- 
nouncements, which  it  is  the  object  of  this  new  fiction  to 
elude,  are  virtually  the  same  as  those  implied  in  that  judg- 
ment of  identity  which  is  necessary  to  the  *  perception '  of 
this  pen  or  this  paper.  That '  interruption  of  our  resembling 
perceptions,'  of  which  *  reflection '  (in  the  immediate  context 
^Season')  is  here  said  to  ^tell  us,'  is  merely  that  difference  in 
time,  or  succession,  which  Hume  everywhere  else  treats  as  a 
datum  of  sense,  and  which,  as  he  points  out,  is  as  necessary 
a  factor  in  the  idea  of  identity,  as  is  the  imagination  of  an 
existence  continued  throughout  the  succession.  Thus  the 
contradiction,  which  suggests  this  philosophical  fiction  of 
double  existence,  has  been  already  present  and  overcome  in 
every  perception  of  a  qualified  object.  Nor  does  the  fiction 
itself,  by  which  the  contradiction  is  eluded,  differ  except 
verbally  firom  that  suggested  by  the  contradiction  between 


P.doa 


« P.  602. 


HOW  CAN  rr  BE  DISPENSED  WITH?  201 

the  interruption  and  the  identity  of  perceptions.  What 
power  is  there  in  the  word  *  object'  that  the  supposition  of 
an  unperceived  existence  of  perceptions,  continued  while  their 
appearance  is  broken,  should  be  an  unavoidable  fiction  of  the 
imagination,  while  that  of  ^  the  doable  existence  of  percep- 
tions and  objects '  is  a  gratuitous  fiction  of  philosophers,  of 
which  *  vulgar  *  thinking  is  entirely  innocent  ? 

809.  That  it  is  gratuitous  we  may  readily  admit,  but  only  Are  they 
because  a  recognition  of  the  function   of  the   Ego  in  the  "oWodi*"** 


m 


primary  constitution  of  the  qualified  individual  object— this  the  sim- 
pen  or  this  paper — renders  it  superfluous.  To  the  philosophy,  P^®^  P^f" 
however,  in  which  Hume  was  bred,  the  perception  of  a  quali- 
fied object  was  simply  a  feeling.  No  intellectual  synthesis  of 
successive  feelings  was  recognized  as  involved  in  it.  It  wa-s 
only  so  far  as  the  dependence  of  the  feeling  on  our  organs,  in 
the  absence  of  any  clear  distinction  between  feeling  and  felt 
thing,  seemed  to  imply  a  dependent  and  broken  existence  of 
the  thing,  that  any  difficulty  arose — a  difficulty  met  by  the 
supposition  that  tiie  felt  thing,  whose  existence  was  thus 
broken  and  dependent,  represented  an  unfelt  and  permanent 
thing  of  which  it  is  a  copy  or  effect.  To  the  Berkeleian  ob- 
jections, already  fatal  to  this  supposition,  Hume  has  his  own 
to  add,  viz.  that  we  can  have  no  idea  of  relation  in  the  way 
of  cause  and  effect  except  as  between  objects  which  we  have 
observed,  and  therefore  can  have  no  idea  of  it  as  existing 
between  a  perception  and  an  object  of  which  we  can  only  say 
that  it  is  not  a  perception.  Is  all  existence  then  '  broken 
and  dependent'  ?  That  is  the  *  sceptical  *  conclusion  which 
Hume  professes  to  adopt — subject,  however,  to  the  condition 
of  accounting  for  the  contrary  supposition  (without  which, 
as  he  has  to  admit,  we  could  not  thinker  speak,  and  which 
alone  gives  a  meaning  to  his  own  phraseology  about  impres- 
sions and  ideas)  as  a  fiction  of  the  imagination.  He  does 
this,  as  we  have  seen,  by  tracing  a  series  of  contradictions, 
with  corresponding  hypotheses  invented,  either  instinctively 
or  upon  reflection,  in  order  to  escape  the  uneasiness  which 
they  cause,  all  ultimately  due  to  our  mistaking  similar  suc- 
cessive feelings  for  an  identical  object.  Of  such  an  object, 
then,  we  must  have  an  idea  to  begin  with,  and  it  is  an  object 
permanent  throughout  a  variation  of  time,  which  means  a 
succession  of  feelings ;  in  other  words,  it  is  a  felt  thing,  as 
distinct  from  feelings  but  to  which  feelings  are  referred  as 


■ions. 


262  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

its  qualities.     Thus  the  most  primary  perception — that  in 
default  of  which  Hume  would  have  no  reality  to  oppose  to 
fiction,  nor  any  point  of  departure  for  the  supposed  construc- 
tion of  fictions — already  implies  that  transformation  of  feel- 
ings into  changing  relations  of  a  thing  which,  preventing 
any  incompatibility  between  the  perpetual  brokenness  of  the 
feeling  and  the  permanence  of  the  thing,  ^  eludes '  by  antici- 
pation all  the  contradictions  which,  according  to  Hume,  we 
only  ^  elude 'by  speaking  as  if  we  had  ideas  that  we  have  not. 
Yet  they         ^lO.  *  Ideas  that  we  have  not ;'  for  no  one  of  the  fictions  by 
are  not       which  we  elude  the  contradictions,  nor  indeed  any  one  of  the 
^eas  he-    Contradictory  judgments  themselves,  can  be  taken  to  repre- 
caoM  sent  an  '  idea '  according  to  Hume's  account  of  ideas.     He 

f^mno  allows  himself  indeed  to  speak  of  our  having  ideas  of  iden- 
impres-  tical  objects,  such  as  this  table  while  I  see  or  Umcli  ii — though 
in  this  case,  as  has  been  shown,  either  the  object  is  not 
identical  or  the  idea  of  it  cannot  be  copied  from  an  impres- 
sion— and  of  our  transferring  this  idea  to  resembling  but 
interrupted  perceptions.  But  the  supposition  to  which  the 
conti*adiction  involved  in  this  transference  gives  rise — the 
supposition  that  the  perception  continues  to  exist  when  it  is 
not  perceived — is  shown  by  the  very  statement  of  it  to  be 
no  possible  copy  of  an  impression.  Yet  according  to  Hume  it 
is  a  ^  belief,'  and  a  belief  is  *  a  lively  idea  associated  with  a 
present  impression.'  What  then  is  the  impression  and  what 
the  associated  idea?  'As  the  propensity  to  feign  the  con- 
tinued existence  of  sensible  objects  arises  from  some  lively 
impressions  of  the  memory,  it  bestows  a  vivacity  on  that 
fiction ;  or,  in  other  words,  makes  us  believe  the  continued 
existence  of  body.'  *  Well  and  good :  but  this  only  answers 
the  first  part  of  our  question.  It  tells  us  what  are  the  im- 
pressions in  the  supposed  case  of  belief,  but  not  what  is  the 
associated  idea  to  which  their  liveliness  is  communicated. 
To  say  that  it  arises  firom  a  propensity  to  feign,  strong  in 
proportion  to  the  liveliness  of  the  supposed  impressions  of 
memory,  does  not  tell  us  of  what  impression  it  is  a  copy. 
Such  a  propensity  indeed  would  be  an  *  impression  of  reflec- 
tion,' but  the  fiction  itself  is  neither  the  propensity  nor  a 
copy  of  it.  The  only  possible  supposition  left  for  Hume 
would  be  that  it  is  a  'compound  idea ;'  but  what  combination 

■  P.  406. 


HUME'S  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  263 

of  '  perceptions '  can  amount  to  the  existence  of  perceptions 
when  they  are  not  perceived  P 

311.  From  this  long  excursion  into  Hume*s  doctrine  of  Com- 
relation  in  the  way  of  identity — having  found  him  admitting  pn-rison  of 
explicitly  that  it  is  only  by  a  *  fiction  of  the  imagination  *  experience 
that  we  identify  this  table  as  now  seen  with  this  table  as  ^jth  past, 
seen  an  hour  ago,  and  implicitly  that  the  same  fiction  is  in-  yields 
volved  in  the  perception  of  this  table  as  an  identical  object  relation 
even  when  hand  or  eye  is  kept  upon  it,  while  yet  he  says  and  effbct, 
not  a  word  to  vindicate  the  possibility  of  such  a  fiction  for  pre- 
a  faculty  which  can  merely  reproduce  and  combine  *  perish-  f^^^e^t 
ing  impressions' — we  return  to  consider  its  bearing  upon  of  identity 
his  doctrine  of  relation  in  the  way  of  cause  and  eflFect.     Ac- 
cording to  him,  as  we  saw,^  that  relation,  <  considered  as 
a  philosophical  *  one,  is  founded  on  a  comparison  of  present 
experience  with  past,  in  the  sense  that  we  regard  an  object, 
precedent  and  contiguous  to  another,  as  its  cause  when  all 
like  objects  have  been  found  similarly  related.    The  question 
then  arises  whether  the  experiences  compared — the  present 
and  the  past  alike — do  not  involve  the  fiction  of  identity 
along  with  the  whole  family  of  other  fictions  which  Hume 
affiliates  to  it?   Does  the  relation  of  precedence  and  sequence, 
which,  if  constant,  amounts   to   that  of  cause  and  effect, 
merely  mean  precedence  and  sequence  of  two  feelings,  in- 
definitely like  an  indefinite  number  of  other  feelings  that 
have  thus  the  one  preceded  and  the  other  followed ;  or  is  it 
a  relation  between  one  qualified  thing  or  definite  fact  always 
the  same  with  itself,  and  another  such  thing  or  fact  always 
the  same  with  itself?    The  question  carries  its  own  answer. 
If  in  the  definition  quoted  Hume  used  the  phrase  *  all  like 
objects '  instead  of  the  *  same  object,'  in  order  to  avoid  the 
appearance  of  introducing  the  '  fiction '  of  identity  into  the 
definition  of  cause,  the  device  does  not  avail  him  much.  The 
effect  of  the  *like'  is  neutralized  by  the  *  all.'     A  uniform  re- 
lation is  impossible  except  between  objects  of  which  each  has 
a  definite  identity. 

312.  When  Hume  has  to  describe  the  experience  which  ^thout 
gives  the  idea  of  cause  and  effect,  he  virtually  admits  this,  ^^'ch 
*  The  nature  of  experience,'  he  tells  us,  *  is  this.     We  re-  be*^  re^ 
member  to  have  had  frequent  instances  of  the  existence  of  cognition 

of  an 
>  AboTe,  pan.  298  and  299. 


264  GENERAL  INTRODUCrnON. 

object  as     one  species  of  objects,  and  also  remember  that  the  indiTidnals 
^erwtd     ^^  another  species  of  objects  have  always  attended  them,  and 
babra.        haTC  existed  in  a  regnlar  order  of  contignitj  and  succession 
with  regard  to  them.     Thus  we  remember  to  have  seen  that 
species  of  object  we  caU^me,  and  to  have  felt  that  species  of 
sensation  we  call  heed.    We  likewise  call  to  mind  their  con- 
stant conjunction  in  all  past  instances.  Without  any  farther 
ceremony  we  call  the  one  cause,  and  the  other  effect,  and 
infer  the  existence  of  the  one  from  the  other.' '    It  appears, 
then,  that  upon  experiencing  certain  sensations  of  sight  and 
touch,  we  recognize  each  as  *one  of  a  species  of  objects '  which 
we  remember  to  have  obsenred  in  certain  constant  relations 
before.     In  virtue  of  the  reoc^nition  the  sensations  become 
severally  this^me  and  this  heat;  and  in  virtue  of  the  remem- 
brance the  objects  thus  recognized  are  held  to  be  related  in 
the  way  of  cause  and  effect.    Now  it  is  clear  that  though  the 
recognition  takes  place  upon  occasion  of  a  feeling,  the  object 
recognized — ^this  flame  or  this  heat — is  by  no  means  the  feel- 
ing as  a  ^perishing  existence.'    Unless  the  feeling  were 
taken  to  represent  a  thing,  conceived  as  permanently  existing 
under  certain  relations  and  attributes — in  other  words,  unless 
it  were  identified  by  thought — it  would  be  no  definite  object, 
not  this  fiwme  or  this  heat,  at  all.     The  moment  it  is  named, 
it  has  ceased  to  be  a  feeling  and  become  a  felt  thing,  or,  in 
Hume's  language,  an  *  individual  of  a  apecies  of  objects.^  And 
just  as  the  present '  perception '  is  the  recognition  of  such  an 
individual,  so  the  remembrance  which  determines  the  recog- 
nition is  one  wholly  different  from  the  return  with  lessened 
liveliness  of  a  feeling  more  strongly  felt  before.    According 
to  Hume's  own  statement,  it  consists  in  recalling  'frequent 
instances  of  the  existence  of  a  species  of  objects.^  It  is  remem- 
brance of  an  experience  in  which  every  feeling,  that  has  been 
attended  to,  has  been  interpreted  as  a  firesh  appearance  of 
some  qualified  object  that  *  exists '  throughout  its  appear- 
ances— an  experience  which  for  that  reason  forms  a  con- 
nected whole.    K  it  were  not  so,  there  could  be  no  such 
comparison  of  the  relations  in  which  two  objects  are  now 
presented  with  those  in  which  they  have  always  been  pre- 
sented, as  that  which  according  to  Hume  determines  us  to 
regard  tbem  as  cause  and  effect.    The  condition  of  our  so 

>  P.  388. 


IT  'GOES  BEYOND  SENSE.'  266 

regarding  them  is  that  we  suppose  the  objects  now  presented 
to  be  ^&6  same  with  those  of  which  we  have  hod  previous 
experience.  It  is  only  on  supposition  that  a  certain  sensa- 
tion of  sight  is  not  merely  ike  a  multitude  of  others^  but 
represents  the  same  object  as  that  which  I  have  previously 
known  as  flame,  that  I  infer  the  sequence  of  heat  and,  when 
it  does  follow,  regard  it  as  an  effect.  K  I  thought  that  the 
sensation  of  sight,  however  like  those  previously  referred  to 
flame,  did  not  represent  the  same  object,  I  should  not  infer 
heat  as  effect ;  and  conversely,  if,  having  identified  the  sensa- 
tion of  sight  as  representative  of  flame,  I  found  that  the 
inferred  heat  was  not  actually  felt,  I  should  judge  that  I 
was  mistaken  in  the  identification.  It  follows  that  it  is  only 
an  experience  of  identical,  and  by  consequence  related  and 
qualified,  objects,  of  which  the  memory  can  so  determine  a 
sequence  of  feelings  as  to  constitute  it  an  experience  of  cause 
and  effect.  Thus  the  perception  and  remembrance  upon 
which,  according  to  Hume,  we  judge  one  object  to  be  the 
cause  of  another,  alike  rest  on  the  ^  fictions  of  identity  and 
continued  existence.'  Without  these  no  present  experience 
would,  in  his  language,  be  an  instance  of  an  individual  of  a 
certain  species  existing  in  a  certain  relation,  nor  would  there 
be  a  past  experience  of  individuals  of  the  same  species,  by 
comparison  with  which  the  constancy  of  the  relation  might 
be  ascertained. 

313.  Against  this  derivation  of  the  conception  of  cause  and  Home 
effect,  as  implying  that  of  identity,  may  be  urged  the  fact  ^tionTof 
that  when  we  would  ascertaiu  the  ta-uth  of  any  identification  identity 
we  do  so  by  reference  to  causes  and  effects.    As  Hume  him-  ^h^oomi 
self  puts  it  at  the  outset  of  his  discussion  of  causation,  an  before  tho 
inference  of  identity  *  beyond  the  impressions  of  our  senses  ^*^'*"*'* 
can  be  founded  only  on  the  connexion  of  cause  and  effect.'  •  •  • 
'Whenever  we  discover  a  perfect  resemblance  between  a 
new  object  and  one  which  was  formerly  present  to  the  senses, 
we  consider  whether  it  be  common  in  that  species  of  objects; 
whether  possibly  or  probably  any  cause  could  operate  in 
producing  the  change  and  resemblance ;  and  according  as  we 
determine  concerning  these  causes  and  effects,  we  form  our 
judgment  concerning  the  identity  of  the  object.'  ^    This  ad- 
mission, it  may  be  said,  though  it  tells  against  Hume's  own 

•  P.  876. 


see  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

subsequent  explanation  of  identity  as  a  fiction  of  the  imagi- 
nation, is  equally  inconsistent  with  any  doctrine  that  would 
treat  identity  as  the  presupposition  of  inference  to  cause  or 
effect.  Now  undoubtedly  if  the  identity  of  interrupted  per- 
ceptions is  one  fiction  of  the  imagination  and  the  relation  of 
cause  and  effect  another,  each  resulting  from  ^  custom/  to 
say  with  Hume,  that  we  must  have  the  idea  of  cause  in  order  to 
arrive  at  the  supposition  of  identity,  is  logically  to  exclude  any 
derivation  of  that  idea  from  an  experience  which  involves 
the  supposition  of  identity.  The  ^  custom '  which  generates 
the  idea  of  cause  must  have  done  its  work  before  that  which 
generates  the  supposition  of  identity  can  begin.  Hume  there- 
fore, after  the  admission  just  quoted,  was  not  entitled  to  treat 
the  inference  to  cause  or  effect  as  a  habit  derived  from  ex- 
perience of  identical  things.  But  it  is  otherwise  if  the  con- 
ceptions of  causation  and  identity  are  correlative — not  results 
of  experience  of  which  one  must  be  formed  before  the  other, 
but  co-ordinate  expressions  of  one  and  the  same  synthetic 
principle,  which  renders  experience  possible.  And  this  is 
the  real  state  of  the  case.  It  is  true,  as  Hume  points  out, 
that  when  we  want  to  know  whether  a  certain  sensation, 
precisely  resembling  one  that  we  have  previously  experienced, 
represents  the  same  object,  we  do  so  by  asking  how  other- 
Their  tame  wise  it  Can  be  accounted  for.  If  no  difference  appears  in  its 
^™^  antecedents  or  sequents,  we  identify  it — refer  it  to  the  same 
thing — as  that  previously  experienced;  for  its  relations 
(which,  since  it  is  an  event  in  time,  take  the  form  of  antece- 
dence and  sequence)  are  the  thing.  The  conceptions  of 
identity  and  of  relation  in  the  way  of  cause  and  effect  are  thus 
as  strictly  correlative  and  inseparable  as  those  of  the  thing 
and  of  its  relations.  .Without  the  conception  of  identity  experi- 
ence would  want  a  centre,  without  that  of  cause  and  effect  it 
would  want  a  circumference.  Without  the  supposition  of 
objects  which  ^  existing  at  one  time  are  the  same  with  them- 
selves as  existing  at  other  times' — a  supposition  which  at 
last,  when  through  acquaintance  with  the  endlessness  of 
orderly  change  we  have  learnt  that  there  is  but  one  object 
for  which  such  identity  can  be  claimed  without  qualification, 
becomes  the  conception  of  nature  as  a  uniform  whole — ^there 
could  be  no  such  comparison  of  the  relations  in  which  an 
object  is  now  presented  with  those  in  which  it  has  been 
before  presented,  as  determines  us  to  reckon  it  the  cause  or 


THEREFORE  A  BASIS  FOR  rNFERENCE.  867 

effect  of  another ;  but  it  is  equally  true  that  it  is  only  by 
such  comparison  of  relations  that  the  identity  of  any  particu- 
lar object  can  be  ascertained. 

314.  Thus,  though  we  may  concede  to  Hume  that  neither  Home 
in  the  inference  to  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  nor  in  the  9^"^  ^^^ 
conclusions  we  draw  from  it  do  we  go  *  beyond  experience,'*  that  wo  do 
this  will  merely  be,  if  his  account  of  it  as  a  ^philosophical  "®^^^^ 
relation '  be  true,  because  in  experience  we  already  go  beyond  yo^  sense 
sense.     *  There  is  nothing,'  says  Hume,  *  in  any  object  con-  \^  reason- 
sidered  in  itself  that  can  afford  us  a  reason  for  drawing  a  jn^p^f" 
eonclusion  beyond  it,'  • — a  statement  which  to  him  means  ception. 
that,  if  the  mind  really  passes  from  it  to  another,  this  is  only 
because  as  a  matter  of  fact  another  feeling  follows  on  the  first. 
Bu<^  in  truth,  if  each  teeling  were  merely  *  considered  in  itself,' 
the  fact  that  one  follows  on  another  would  be  no  fact  for  the 
$fuhject  ofthefeelmgM,  no  starting-point  of  intelligent  experience 
at  all ;  for  the  fact  is  the  relation  between  the  feeUngs — a 
relation  which  only  exists  for  a  subject  that  considers  neither 
feeling  '  in  itself,'  as  a  '  separate  and  perishing  existence,' 
but  finds  a  reality  in  the  determination  of  each  by  the  other 
which,  as  it  is  not  either  or  both  of  them,  so  survives,  while 
they  pass,  as  a  permanent  factor  of  experience.    Thus  in 
order  that  any  definite  *  object '  of  experience  may  exist  for 
us,  our  feelings  must  have  ceased  to  be  what  according  to 
Hume  they  are  in  themselves.     They  cease  to  be  so  in  virtue 
of  the  presence  to  them  of  the  Ego,  in  common  relation  to 
which  tiiey  become  related  to  each  other  as  mutually  qualified 
members  of  a  permanent  system — a  system  which  at  first  for 
the  individual  consciousness  exists  only  as  a  forecast  or  in 
outline,  and  is  gradually  realized  and  filled  up  with  the 
accession  of  experience.     It  is  quite  true  that  nothing  more 
than  the  reference  to  such  a  system,  already  necessary  to 
constitute  the  simplest  object  of  experience,  is  involved  in 
that  interpretation  of  every  event  as  a  changed  appearance 
of  an  unchanging  order,  and  therefore  to  be  accounted  for, 
which  we  call  inference  to  a  cause  or  the  inference  of  neces- 
sary connection ;  or,  again,  in  the  identification  of  the  event, 
the  determination  of  its  particular  nature  by  the  discovery         y^ 
of  its  particular  cause.  — _^— ^-^ 

815.  The  supposed  difference  then  between  immediate  and  How  his 
mediate  cognition  is  no  absolute  difference.     It  is  not  a  m^ht^have 
■  AboTe,  pan.  285  &  286.  *  P»  486  and  elsewhoM 


968 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


defduped 


Itf  actual 
ontoome. 


difference  between  experience  and  a  process  that  goes 
beyond  experience,  or  between  an  experience  unregulated 
bj  a  conception  of  a  permanent  system  and  one  that  is  so 
regulated.  It  lies  merely  in  the  degree  of  fullness  and  ar- 
ticulation which  that  conception  has  attained.  K  this  had 
been  what  Hume  meant  to  convey  in  his  assimilation  of 
inference  to  perception,  he  would  have  gone  fiix  to  anticipate 
the  result  of  the  enquiry  which  Eant  started.  And  this  is 
what  he  might  have  come  to  mean  if,  instead  of  playing  feist 
and  loose  with  *  impression*  and  *  object,'  using  each  as 
plausibility  required  on  the  principle  of  accommodation  to  the 

*  vulgar,'  he  had  faced  the  consequence  of  his  own  implicit 
admission,  that  every  perception  of  an  object  as  identical  is  a 

*  fiction '  in  which  we  go  beyond  present  feeling.  As  it  is, 
his  *  scepticism  with  regard  to  the  senses  *  goes  far  enough 
to  empty  their  *  reports '  of  the  content  which  the  *  vulgar ' 
ascribe  to  them,  and  thus  to  put  a  breach  between  sense  and 
the  processes  of  knowledge,  but  not  far  enough  to  replace 
the  ^  sensible  thing '  by  a  function  of  reason.  In  default  of 
such  replacement,  there  was  no  way  of  filling  the  breach  but 
to  bring  back  the  vulgar  theory  under  the  cover  of  habits 
and  '  tendencies  to  feign,'  which  all  suppose  a  ready-made 
knowledge  of  the  sensible  thing  as  their  starting-point. 
Hence  the  constant  contradiction,  which  it  is  our  thankless 
task  to  trace,  between  his  solution  of  the  real  world  into  a 
succession  of  feelings  and  the  devices  by  which  he  sought  to 
make  room  in  ]iis  system  for  the  actual  procedure  of  the  phy- 
sioal  sciences^'  Conspicuous  among  these  is  his  allowance 
of  that  view  of  relation  in  the  way  of  cause  and  effect  as  an 
objective  reality,  which  is  represented  by  his  definition  of  it 
as  a  *  philosophical  relation.'  It  is  in  the  sense  represented 
by  that  definition  that  his  doctrine  has  been  understood  and 
retained  by  subsequent  formulators  of  inductive  logic ;  but 
on  examining  it  in  the  light  of  his  own  statements  we  have 
found  that  the  relation,  as  thus  defined,  is  not  that  which, 
his  theory  required,  and  as  which  to  represent  it  is  the  whole 
motive  of  his  disquisition  on  the  subject.  It  is  not  a  se- 
quence of  impression  upon  impression,  distinguished  merely 
by  its  constancy ;  nor  a  sequence  of  idea  upon  impression, 
distinguished  merely  by  that  transfer  of  liveliness  to  the  idea 
which  arises  from  the  constancy  of  its  sequence  upon  the  im- 
pression,    n  is  a  relation  between  '  objects '  of  which  each 


CAUSE  AND  EFFECT  AS  NATURAL  RELATION.      269 

is  what  it  is  onlj  as  '  an  instance  of  a  species '  that  exists 
continuously,  and  therefore  in  distinction  from  our  *  perishing 
impressions/  according  to  a  regular  order  of  *  contiguity  and 
succession.*  As  such  existence  and  order  are  by  Hume's 
own  showing  no  possible  impressions,  and  by  consequence 
no  possible  ideas,  so  neither  are  the  *  objects '  which  derive 
their  whole  character  from  them. 

816.  It  may  be  said,  however,  that  wherever  Hume  ad-  Ko  pMo- 
mits  a  definition  purporting  to  be  of  a  *  philosophical  rela-  ^^^ 
tion,'  he  does  so  only  as  an  accommodation,  and  under  warning  ftdmissible 
that  every  such  relation  is  *  fictitious  *  except  so  far  as  it  is  J^?""* 
equivalent  to  a  natural  one;  that  according  to  his  express  notderivod 
statement  *  it  is  only  so  far  as  causation  is  a,  natural  relation,  *~™  * 
and  produces  an  union  among  our  ideas,  that  we  are  able  to  one. 
reason  upon  it  or  draw  any  inference  from  it;'^  and  that 
therefore  it  is  only  by  his  definition  of  it  as  a  '  natural  rela- 
tion '  that  he  is  to  be  judged.     Such  a  vindication  of  Hume 
would  be  more  true  than   eflFective.     That  with  him  the 
*  philosophical '  relation  of  cause  and  eflFect  is  *  fictitious,* 
with  all  the  fictitiousness  of  a  ^  continued  existence  distinct 
from  perceptions,*  is  what  it  has  been  the  object  of  the 
preceding  paragraphs  to  show.     But  the  fictitiousness  of  a 
relation  can  with  him  mean  nothing  else  than  that,  instead 
of  having  an  idea  of  it,  we  have  only  a  *  tendency  to  suppose  * 
that  we  have  such  an  idea.     Thus  the  designation  of- the 
philosophical  relation  of  cause  and  effect  carries  with  it  two 
conditions,  one  negative,  the  other  positive,  on  the  obser- 
vance of  which  the  logical  value  of  the  designation  depends. 
The  *  tendency  to  suppose  *  must  not  after  all  be  itself  trans- 
lated into  the  idea  which  it  is  to  replace ;  and  it  must  be 
accounted  for  as  derived  from  a  ^  natural  relation '  which  is 
not  fictitious.     That  the  negative  condition  is  violated  by 
Hume,  we  have  sufficiently  seen.     He  treats  the  ^philo- 
sophical relation  *  of  cause  and  effect,  in  spite  of  the  'fictions' 
which  it  involves,  not  as  a  name  for  a  tendency  to  suppose  that 
we  have  an  idea  which  we  have  not,  but  as  itself  a  definite  idea 
on  which  he  founds  various  *  rules  for  judging  what  objects 
are  really  so  related  and  what  are  not.'*    That  the  positive 
condition  is  violated  also— that  the  *  natural  relation'  of 
cause  and  effect,  according  to  the  sense  in  which  his  definition 
of  it  is  meant  to  be  understood,  already  itself  involves  *  fic- 

»  P.  304.  •  Part  m.  §  16. 


970  OENERAL  INTRODUGrnON. 

tions/  and  onlj  for  that  reason  is  a  possible  source  of  the 

*  phQosophical ' — is  what  we  have  next  to  show. 

Examina-  317.  That  definition,  it  will  be  remembered,  nms  as 
Uon  of  hi*  follows:  *  A  causo  is  an  object  precedent  and  contiguous 
of  cavM  to  another,  and  so  united  with  it  in  the  imagination  that 
*"f  ®^"^  the  idea  of  the  one  determines  the  mind  to  form  the  idea 
nUidon.'  of  the  other,  and  the  impression  of  the  one  to  form  a  more 
livelj  idea  of  the  other/  Now,  as  has  been  sufficientlj  shown, 
the  object  of  an  idea  with  Hnme  can  properljr  mean  nothing 
but  the  impression  from  which  the  idea  is  deriyed,  which 
again  is  only  the  livelier  idea,  even  as  the  idea  is  the  fiednter 
impression.  The  idea  and  the  object  of  it,  then,  only  differ 
as  different  stages  in  the  vivacity  of  a  feeling.'  It  most  be 
remembered,  further,  in  regard  to  the  *  determination  of  the 
mind '  spoken  of  in  the  definition,  that  the  *  mind'  accord- 
ing to  Hame  is  merely  a  succession  of  impressions  and  ideas, 
and  that  its  *  determination  *  means  no  more  than  a  certain 
habitualness  in  this  succession.  Deprived  of  the  benefit  of 
ambiguous  phraseology,  then,  the  definition  would  run  thus  : 
*A  cause  is  a  lively  feeling  immediately  precedent  to  another,* 
and  so  united  with  it  that  when  either  of  the  two  more 
faintly  recurs,  the  other  follows  with  like  fidntness,  and  when 
either  occurs  with  the  maximum  of  liveliness  the  other 
follows  with  less,  but  still  great,  liveliness.'  Thus  stated,  the 
definition  would  correspond  well  enough  to  the  process  by 
which  Hume  arrives  at  it,  of  which  the  whole  drift,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  to  merge  the  so-called  objective  relation  of  cause 
and  effect,  with  the  so-called  inference  trom  it,  in  the  mere 
habitual  transition  from  one  feeling  to  another.  But  it  is 
only  because  not  thus  stated,  and  because  the  actual  state- 
ment is  understood  to  carry  a  meaning  of  which  Hume's 
doctrine  does  not  consistently  admit,  that  it  has  a  chance  of 
finding  acceptance.    Its  plausibility  depends  on  *  object '  and 

*  mind '  and  *  determination '  being  understood  precisely  in 
the  sense  in  which,  according  to  Hume,  they  ought  not  to  be 
understood,  so  that  it  shall  express  not  a  sequence  of  feeling 

>  See  aboTe,  paragraphs  1 96  and  208.  and   contignonB.'     Contigaitr  in  space 

Gf.  also,  among  other  passages,  one  in  (which  is  what  we  natnrally  understand 

the  chapter  now  under  consideration  by  *  contiguity,'  when  used  absolutely) 

(p.  451) — 'Ideas  always  represent  their  he  could  not  have  deliberately  taken  to 

o^'ecta  or  impressions*  be  necessary  to  constitute  the  relation 

'  The  phrase  '  immediately  precedent'  of  cause  and  effect,  since  the  impressions 

would  seem  to  convey  Hume's  meaning  so  related,  as  he  elsewhere  shows,  may 

better  than  his  own  phrase  'precedent  often  not  be  in  space  at  all 


AS  J5UCH,  rr  IS  not  objective.  271 

ujfon  feeling,  as  this  might  be  for  a  merely  feeling  subject, 
bnt  that  permanent  relation  or  law  of  nature  which  to  a 
subject  that  thinks  upon  its  feelings,  and  only  to  such  a 
subject,  their  sequence  constitutes  or  on  which  it  depends. 

318.  It  is  this  essential  distinction  between  the  sequence  Bcnbie 
of  feeling  upon  feeUng  for  a  sentient  subject  and  the  relation  ^^^^^^^ 
which  to  a  thinking  subject  this  sequence  constitutes — a  relation. 
distinction  not  less  essential  than  that  between  the  con-  ^wHume 
ditions,  through  which  a  man  passes  in  sleep,  as  they  are  account. 
for  the  sleeping  subject  himself,  and  as  they  are  for  another 
thinking  upon  them — which  it  is  the  characteristic  of  Hume's 
doctrine  of  natural  relation  in  all  its   forms   to   disguise. 

Only  in  virtue  of  the  presence  to  feelings  of  a  subject,  which 
distinguishes  itself  from  them,  do  they  become  related  objects. 
Thus,  with  Hume's  exclusion  of  such  a  subject,  with  his  re- 
duction of  mind  and  world  alike  to  the  succession  of  feelings, 
relations  and  ideas  of  relation  logically  disappear.  But  by 
help  of  the  phrase  *  natural  relation,'  covering,  as  it  does, 
two  wholly  different  things — l^e  involuntary  sequence  of  one 
feeling  upon  another,  and  that  determination  of  each  by  the 
otheridrich  can  only" take  place  for  a  synthetic  self-con- 
B^usflJBfiB-^-^  18^  able  on  the  one  hand  to  deny  that  the 
relations  which  form  the  framework  of  knowledge  are  more 
than  sequences  of  feeling,  and  on  the  other  to  clothe  them 
with  so  much  of  the  real  character  of  relations  as  qualifies 
them  for  ^principles  of  union  among  ideas.'  Thus  the  mere 
occurrence  of  similar  feelings  is  with  him  already  that  rela- 
tion in  the  way  of  resemblance,  which  in  truth  only  exists  for 
a  subject  that  can  contemplate  them  as  permanent  objects. 
In  like  manner  the  succession  of  feelings,  which  can  only 
constitute  time  for  a  subject  that  contrasts  the  succession 
with  its  own  unity,  and  which,  if  ideas  were  feelings,  would 
exclude  the  possibility  of  an  idea  of  time,  is  yet  with  him 
indifferentiy  time  and  the  idea  of  time,  though  ideas  are 
fiselings  and  there  is  no  *  mind  '  but  their  succession. 

319.  The  fallacy  of  Hume's  doctrine  of  causation  is  merely  If  an  elTeet 
an  aggravated  form  of  that  which  has  generally  passed  mus-  *"  ™^ly 
ter  in  his  doctrine  of  time.     If  time,  because  a  relation  be-  stantij 
tween  feelings,  can  be  supposed  to  survive  the  exclusion  of  a  o^«rvei 
thinking  self  and  the  reduction  of  the  world  and  mind  to  a  bow  can  an 
succession  of  feelings,  the  relation  of  cause  and  eflfect  has  «jpntbean 
only  to  be  assimilated  to  that  of  time  in  order  that  its  in-  f^^  tim* 


272  GENERAL  INTRODUCnON: 

i^jg  compatibilitj  with  the   dedred  lednctdon  may  disappear, 

obienred  7   The  great  obstacle  to  sach  asBunilation  lies  in  that  opposition 
to  the  mere  sequence  of  feelings  which  causation  as  '  matter 
of  fiu^' — as  that  in  discoyering  which  we  'discoTer  the  real 
existence  and  rehitions  of  objects  * — ^purports  to  carry  with 
it.    Why  do  we  set  aside  onr  osnal  experience  as  delosiye  in 
Hume        contrast  with  the  exceptional  experience  of  the  hiboratory — 
^^!^        why  do  we  decide  that  an  event  which  has  seemed  to  happen 
qoMtion;    Cannot  really  have  happened,  because  under  the  given  con- 
ditions no  adequate  cause  of  it  could  have  been  operative — if 
the  relation  of  cause  and  effect  is  itself  merely  a  succession 
of  seemings,  repeated  so  often  as  to  leave  behind  it  a  lively 
expectation  of  its  recurrence  9   This  question,  once  £Eurly  put, 
cannot  be  answered :  it  can  only  be  evaded.    It  is  Hume's 
method  of  evasion  that  we  have  now  more  particularly  to 
notice. 

320.  In  its  detailed  statement  it  is  very  different  from  the 
method  adopted  in  those  modem  treatises  of  Logic  which, 
beginning  with  the  doctrine  that  fieu^ts  are  merely  feelings  in 
Still,  he  »   ^jjQ  constitution  of  which  thought  has  no  share,  still  contrive 
off  the       to  make  free  use  in  their  logical  canon  of  the  antithesis  be- 
Inductiye    tween  the  real  and  apparent.      The  key  to  this  modem 
whf  ch  gap-  method  is  to  be  found  in  its  ambiguous  use  of  the  term  '  phe- 
posee  an      nomenon,'  alike  for  the  feeling  as  it  is  felt,  *  perishing  *  when 
Mquen^.     ^^  ceases  to  be  felt,  and  for  the  feeling  as  it  is  for  a  thinking 
subject — ^a  qualifying  and  qualified  element  in  a  permanent 
world.     Only  if  facts  were  *  phenomena '  in  the  former  sense 
would  the  antithesis  between  facts  and  conceptions  be  valid ; 
only  if  ^  phenomena '  are  understood  in  the  latter  sense  can 
causation  be  said  to  be  a  law  of  phenomena.  So  strong,  how- 
ever, is  the  charm  which  this  ambiguous  term  has  exercised, 
that  to  the  ordinary  modem  logician  the  question  above  put 
may  probably  seem  unmeaning.     *  The  appearance,'  he  will 
say,  ^  which  we  set  aside  as  delusive  does  not  consist  in  any 
of  the  reports  of  the  senses — these  are  always  true — but  in 
some  false  supposition  in  regard  to  them  due  to  an  insufficient 
analysis  of  experience,  in  some  reference  of  an  actual  sensa- 
tion to  a  group  of  supposed  possibilities  of  sensation,  called  a 
"  thing,"  which  are  either,  unreal  or  with  which  it  is  not 
really  coimected.     The  correction  of  the  felse  appearance  by 
a  discovery  of  causation  is  the  replacement  of  a  false  sup- 
position, as  to  the  possibility  of  the  antecedence  or  sequence 


HUME  AND  INDUCTIVE  LOGIC.  27a 

of  one  feeling  to  another,  by  the  discovery,  through  analysis 
of  experience,  of  what  feelings  do  actually  precede  and  foUow 
each  other*  It  implies  no  transition  from  feelings  to  things, 
but  only  from  a  supposed  sequence  of  feelings  to  the  actual 
one*  Science  in  its  farthest  range  leaves  us  among  appear- 
ances still.     It  only  teaches  us  what  really  appears.' 

821.  Kow  the  presupposition  of  this  answer  is  the  existence  Can  the 
of  just  that  necessary  connexion  as  between  appearances,  principle 
just  that  objective  order,  for  which,  because  it  is  not  a  possible  for^ty  oi 
*  impression  or  idea,'  Hume  has  to  substitute  a  blind  pro-  nature  be 
pensity  produced  by  habit.  Those  who  make  it,  indeed,  ^^^ 
would  repel  the  imputation  of  believing  in  any  ^  necessary  con-  queaces  ot 
nexion,*  which  to  them  represents  that  *  mysterious  tie*  in  ^'^"8®^ 
which  they  vaguely  suppose  'metaphysicians'  to  believe. 
They  would  say  that  necessary  connexion  is  no  more  than 
uniformity  of  sequence.  But  sequence  of  what  P  Not  of  feel- 
ings as  the  individual  feels  them,  for  then  there  would  be  no 
perfect  uniformities,  but  only  various  degrees  of  approxima- 
tion to  uniformity,  and  the  measure  of  approximation  in  each 
case  would  be  the.  amount  of  the  individual's  experience  in 
that  particular  directiou.  The  procedure  of  the  inductive 
logician  shows  that  his  belief  in  the  uniformity  of  a  sequence 
is  irrespective  of  the  number  of  instances  in  which  it  has  been 
experienced.  A  single  instance  in  which  one  feeling  is  felt 
afber  another,  if  it  satisfy  the  requirements  of  the  '  method  of 
difference,'  i.e.  if  it  show  exactly  what  it  is  that  precedes  and 
what  it  is  that  follows  in  that  instance.  Suffices  to  establish  a 
uniformity  of  sequence,  on  the  principle  that  what  is  fact  once 
is  fEkct  always.  Now  a  uniformity  that  can  be  thus  established 
is  in  the  proper  sense  necessary.  Its  existence  is  not  con- 
tingent on  its  being  felt  by  anyone  or  everyone.  It  does  not 
come  into  being  with  the  experiment  that  shows  it.  It  is 
felt  because  it  is  real,  not  real  because  it  is  felt.  It  may  be 
objected  indeed  that  the  principle  of  the  ^uniformity  of  nature,' 
the  principle  that  what  is  fact  once  is  fact  always,  itself 
gradually  results  from  the  observation  of  facts  which  are  feel- 
ings, and  that  thus  the  principle  which  enables  us  to  dispense 
vnih.  the  repetition  of  a  sensible  experience  is  itself  due  to 
such  repetition.  The  answer  is,  that  feelings  which  are  con- 
ceived as  facts  are  abready  conceived  as  constituents  of  a 
nature.  The  same  presence  of  the  thinking  subject  to,  and 
distinction  of  itself  from,  the  feelings,  which  renders  them 

VOL.  I.  T 


974  GENERAL  EfTRODUCnON. 

knowable  /a^,  renders  them  members  of  a  world  which  is  one 
throaghont  its  changes.  In  other  words,  the  presence  of  ficicts 
from  which  the  uniformity  of  natore,  as  an  abstract  rale,  is 
to  be  inferred,  is  already  the  consciousness  of  that  nniformity 
in  concreio. 
^^th  322.  Hume  himself  makes  a  mnch  more  thorough  attempt 

oiUjvni-    ^  ayoid  that  pre-determination  of  feelings  by  the  conception 
formity  is    of  a  world,  of  things  and  relations,  which  is  implied  in  the 
tiov^M^  yiew  of  them  as  permanent  &cts.    He  wUl  not,  if  he  can  help 
tenninad     it,  SO  Openly  depart  from  the  original  doctrine  that  thought 
by^habit;    j^  merely  weaker  sense.     Such  conceptions  as  those  of  the 
■traiigtliof  uniformity  of  nature  and  of  reality,  being  no  possible  'im- 
'°^totioii     P^^o^B  ^^  ideas,'  he  only  professes  to  admit  in  a  character 
mutt  X9XJ  wholly  different  from  that  in  which  they  actually  gOTern  in- 
iodtfA-        ductive  philosophy.    Just  as  by  reality  he  understands  not 
something  to  which  liveliness  of  feeling  may  be  an  index,  but 
simply  that  hVeliness  itself  and  by  an  inferred  or  belieyed 
reality  a  feeling  to  which  this  liveliness  has  been  communis 
Gated  from  one  that  already  has  it ;  so  he  is  careM  to  tell  us 
^  that  the  supposition  that  the  future  resembles  the  past  is 
derived  entirely  from  habit,  by  which  we  are  determined  to  ex- 
pect for  the  future  the  same  train  of  objects  to  which  we  have 
been  accustomed.' '    The  supposition  then  is  this  '  determina- 
tion,' this  ^  propensity,'  to  expect.   Any  'idea'  derived  from  the 
propensity  can  only  be  the  propensity  itself  at  a  fainter  stage ; 
and  between  such  a  propensity  and  the  conception  of '  nature,' 
whether  as  xmiform  or  otherwise,  there  is  a  difference  which 
only  the  most  hasty  reader  can  be  liable  to  ignore.     But  if 
by  any  confusion  an  expectation  of  future  feelings,  determined 
by  the  remembrance  of  past  feelings,  could  be  made  equivalent 
to  any  conception  of  nature,  it  would  not  be  of  nature  as  uni- 
form.   As  is  the  ^  habit '  which  determines  the  expectation, 
such  must  be  the  expectation  itself;  and  as  have  been  the 
sequences  of  feeling  in  each  man's  past,  such  must  be  the 
habit  which  results  from  them.    Now  no  one's  feelings  have 
always  occurred  to  him  in  the  same  relative  order.    There 
may  be  some  pairs  of  feelings  of  which  one  has  always  been 
felt  before  the  other  and  never  after  it,  and  between  which 
there  has  never  been  an  intervention  of  a  third — although 
(to  take  Hume's  favourite  instance)  even  the  feeling  of  heat 


CAN  HE  ADMIT  UNIFORMITY  OF  NATURE?         275 

may  sometimes  precede  the  sight  of  the  flame — and  in  these 
cases  npon  occurrence  of  one  there  will  be  nothing  to  qualify 
the  expectation  of  the  other.  But  just  so  far  as  there  are 
exceptions  in  our  past  experience  to  the  immediate  sequence 
of  one  feeling  upon  another,  must  there  be  a  qualificatiou 
of  our  expectation  of  the  future,  if  it  be  undetermined  by 
extraneous  conceptions,  with  reference  to  those  particular 
feelings. 

823.  Thus  the  expectation  that  'the  future  will  resemble  Itconid 
the  past,'  if  the  past  means  to  each  man  (and  Hume  could  °^J  ^^ 
not  allow  of  its  meaning  more)  merely  the  succession  of  his  purpose  as 
own  feelings,  must  be  made  up  of  a  multitude  of  different  ex-  ^^\?o°'^f 
pectations — some  few  of  these  being  of  that  absolute  and  uniformity 
unqualified  sort  which  alone,  it  would  seem,  can  regulate  the  ^^  n&tupo. 
transition  that  we  are  pleased  to  call '  necessary  connexion ;' 
the  rest  as  various  in  their  strength  and  liveliness  as  there  are 
possible  differences  between  cases  where  the  chances  are 
evenly  balanced  and  where  they  are  all  on  one  side.     From 
Hume's  point  of  view,  as  he  himself  says,  '  every  past  experi- 
ment,' i.e.  every  instance  in  which  feeling  (a)  has  been  found 
to  follow  feeling  (6),  *  may  be  considered  a  kind  of  chance.' ' 
As  are  the  instances  of  this  kind  to  the  instances  in  which 
some  other  feeling  has  followed  (&),  such  are  the  chances  or 
*  probability '  that  (a)  will  follow  (6)  again,  and  such  upon  the 
occurrence  of  (6)  will  be  that  liveliness  in  the  expectation  of 
(a),  which  alone  with  Hume  is  the  reality  of  the  connexion 
between  them.     Tn  such  an  expectation,  in  an  expectation 
made  up  of  such  expectations,  there  would  be  nothing  to  serve 
the  purpose  which  the  conception  of  the  uniformity  of  nature 
actuaUy  serves  in  inductive  science.    It  could  never  make  us 
believe  that  a  feeling  felt  before  another — as  when  the  motion 
of  a  bell  is  seen  before  the  sound  of  it  has  been  heard — repre* 
sents  the  real  antecedent.    It  could  never  set  us  upon  that 
analysis  of  our  experience  by  which  we  seek  to  get  beyond 
sequences  that  are  merely  usual,  and  admit  of  indefinite  ex- 
ceptions, to  such  as  are  invariable ;  upon  that  ^interiogation 
of  nature '  by  which,  on  the  faith  that  there  is  a  uniformity 
if  only  we  could  find  it  out,  we  wrest  from  her  that  confes- 
sion of  a  law  which  she  does  not  spontaneously  offer.    The 
fact  that  some  sequences  of  feeling  have  been  so  uniform  as 

»  P.  433. 
T  2 


276 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


Hume 
changes 
the  mean- 
ing of  this 
expecta- 
tion by  his 
account  of 
the 

» remem* 
brance  * 
which 
determines 
it. 

Bearing  of 
his  doc- 
trine of 
necessary 
connexion 
upon  his 
argfument 
against 
miracles. 


to  result  in  unqualified  expectations  (if  it  be  so)  could  of  itself 
afford  no  motive  for  tr}ing  to  compass  other  ezpectataons  of 
a  like  character  which  do  not  naturally  present  themselyes. 
Nor  could  there  be  anything  in  the  appearance  of  an  ezoep- 
tion  to  a  sequence,  hitherto  found  uniform,  to  lead  us  to  chaiige 
our  previous  expectation  for  one  which  shall  not  be  liable  to 
fiuch  modification.  The  previous  expectation  would  be  so  far 
weakened,  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  mere  weakening  of  our 
expectations  that  should  lead  to  the  effort  to  place  them  be- 
yond the  possibility  of  being  weakened.  Much  less  could  the 
bundle  of  expectations  come  to  conceive  themselves  as  one 
system  so  as  that,  through  the  interpretation  of  each  excep* 
tion  to  a  supposed  uniformity  of  sequence  as  an  instance  of  a 
real  one,  the  changes  of  the  parts  should  prove  the  unchange- 
ableness  of  the  whole. 

824.  That  a  doctrine  which  reduces  the  order  of  nature  to 
strength  of  expectation,  and  exactly  reverses  the  positions 
severally  given  to  belief  and  reality  in  the  actual  procedure  of 
science,^  should  have  been  ostensibly  adopted  by  scientific  men 
as  theirown — with  every  allowance  for  Hume's  literaiyskilland 


*  It  is  by  ft  curious  fate  that  Hume 
should  have  been  remembered,  at  any 
rate  in  the  '  religious'  world,  chiefly  by 
the  argument  ag}un8t  miracles  which 
appears  in  the  '  Essays ' — an  argument 
which,  however  irrefhigable  in  itself, 
turns  wholly  upon  that  conception  of 
nature  as  other  than  our  instinctive  ex- 
pectations and  imaginations,  which  has 
no  proper  place  in  his  system  (see 
Vol.  IV.  page  89).  If  *  necessary  con- 
nexion '  were  really  no  more  than  the 
transition  of  imagination,  as  determined 
by  constant  association,  from  an  idea  to 
its  usual  attendant — if  there  were  no 
conception  of  an  objective  order  to  de- 
termine belief  other  than  the  belief 
Itaelf — the  fact  that  such  an  event,  as 
the  revival  of  one  four-days-dead  at 
the  command  of  a  person,  had  been 
believed,  since  it  would  show  that  the 
imagination  was  at  liberty  to  pass  from 
the  idea  of  the  revival  to  that  of  the 
command  (or  vice  tfersa)  with  that  live- 
liness which  constitutes  reality,  would 
show  also  that  no  necessary  connexio  •, 
no  law  of  nature  in  the  only  sense  in 
which  Hume  entitles  himself  to  speak 
of  such,  was  violated  by  the  sequence 
of  the  revival  on  the  command.  At 
the  same  time  there  would  be  nothing 


*  miraculous,'  according  to  his  definition 
of  the  miraculous  as  distinct  from 
the  extraordinary,  in  the  case.  Taken 
strictly,  indeed,  Vis  doctrine  implies 
that  a  belief  in  a  miracle  is  a  contra- 
diction in  terms.  An  event  is  not  re- 
garded as  miraculous  unless  it  is  re- 
garded as  a  '  transgression  of  a  law  of 
nature  by  a  particular  volition  of  the 
Deity  or  by  the  interposition  of  some 
invisible  agent'  (page 93, note  i);  but  it 
could  not  transgress  a  law  of  nature  in 
Hume's  sense  unless  it  were  so  inconsis- 
tent with  the  habitual  association  of 
ideas  as  that  it  could  not  be  believed. 
Hume's  only  consistent  way  of  attack- 
ing miracles,  then,  would  have  been  to 
show  that  the  events  in  question,  as 
miraculous^  had  never  been  believed. 
Having  been  obliged  to  recognize  the 
belief  in  their  having  happened,  he  is 
open  to  the  retort  '  ad  hominem '  that 
according  to  his  own  showing  the  belief 
in  the  events  constitutes  their  reality. 
Such  a  retort,  however,  would  be  of  no 
avail  in  the  theological  interest,  which 
requires  not  merely  that  the  events 
should  have  happened  but  that  they 
should    have    been    miraeulous,  i,  e. 

*  transgressions  of  a  law  of  natare  by 
a  particular  volition  of  the  Deity.' 


'SYSTEM  OF  MEMORY/  277 

lor  the  charm  which  the  prospect  of  overcoming  the  separation 
between  reason  and  instinct  exercises  over  naturalists — would 
have  been  nnacconntable  if  the  doctrine  had  been  thus  nakedly 
put  or  consistently  maintained.  But  it  was  not  so.  Hume's 
sense  of  consistency  was  satisfied  when  expectation  deter- 
mined by  remembrance  had  been  put  in  the  place  of  neces- 
sary connexion,  as  the  basis  of  ^inference  to  matters  of  fact.' 
It  does  not  lead  him  to  adjust  his  view  of  the  fact  inferred 
to  his  view  of  the  basis  on  which  the  inference  rests. 
Expectation  is  an  *  impression  of  reflection,'  and  if  the  rela- 
tion of  cause  and  effect  is  no  more  than  expectation,  that 
which  seemed  most  strongly  to  resist  reduction  to  feeling  has 
yet  been  so  reduced.  But  if  the  expectation  is  to  be  no  more 
than  an  impression  of  reflection,  the  object  expected  mnst 
itself  be  no  more  than  an  impression  of  some  kind  or  other. 
The  expectation  must  be  expectation  of  a  feeling,  pure 
and  simple.  Nor  does  Hume  in  so  many  words  allow  that  it  is 
otherwise,  but  meanwhile  though  the  expectation  itself  is  not 
openly  tampered  with,  the  remembrance  that  determines  it  is 
so.  This  is  being  taken  to  be  that,  which  it  cannot  be  unless 
ideas  unborrowed  from  impressions  are  operative  in  and  upon 
it.  It  is  being  regarded,  not  as  the  recurrence  of  a  multitude 
of  feelings  with  a  liveliness  indefinitely  less  than  that  in 
virtue  of  which  they  are  called  impressions  of  sense,  and  in- 
definitely greater  than  that  in  virtue  of  which  they  are  called 
ideas  of  imagination,  but  as  the  recognition  of  a  world  of 
experience,  one,  real  and  abiding.  An  expectation  deter- 
mined by  such  remembrance  is  governed  by  the  same  *  fictions  * 
of  identity  and  continued  existence  which  are  the  formative 
conditions  of  the  remembrance.  Expectation  and  remem- 
brance, in  fact,  are  one  and  the  same  intellectual  act,  one  and  This 
the  same  reference  of  feelings,  given  in  time,  to  an  order  that  f®™®"™- 
is  not  in  time,  distinguished  according  to  the  two  faces  which,  he  de-' 
its  *  matter '  being  in  time,  it  has  to  present  severally  to  past  scpii>^«  i^ 
and  future.  The  remembrance  is  the  measure  of  the  expecta-  concl^tion 
tion,  but  as  the  remembrance  carries  with  it  the  notion  of  a  of  a  system 
world  whose  existence  does  not  depend  on  its  being  remem-  °  °^  ^"* 
bered,  and  whose  laws  do  not  vary  according  to  the  regularity 
or  looseness  with  which  our  ideas  are  associated,  so  too  does 
the  expectation,  and  only  as  so  doing  becomes  the  mover  and 
regulator  of  *  inference  from  the  known  to  the  unknown.' 
325.  In  the  passage  already  quoted,  where  Hume  is  speak- 


278 


GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 


This  ex- 
plains bis 
occasional 
mcon- 
sisteDt 
ascriptioii 
of  an  ob- 
jectiye 
character 
to  causa 
tioiL 


ing  of  the  expectation  in  question  as  depending  simply  on 
habit,  he  jet  speaks  of  it  as  an  expectation  '  of  the  game 
irwin  of  objects  to  which  we  have  been  accustomed.'  These 
words  in  effect  imply  that  it  is  not  habit,  as  constituted 
simply  by  the  repetition  of  separate  sequences  of  feelings, 
that  governs  the  expectation — ^in  which  case,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  expectation  would  be  made  up  of  expectations  as 
many  and  as  various  in  strength  as  have  been  the  sequences 
and  their  several  degrees  of  regularity — ^but,  if  habit  in  any 
sense,  habit  as  itself  governed  by  conceptions  of  '  identity 
and  distinct  continued  existence,'  in  virtue  of  which,  as  past 
experience  is  not  an  indefinite  series  of  perishing  impressions 
of  separate  men  but  represents  one  world,  so  all  fresh 
experience  becomes  part  ^  of  the  same  train  of  objects ;'  part 
of  a  system  of  which,  as  a  whole,  '  the  change  lies  only  in  the 
time.' '  K  now  we  look  back  to  the  account  given  of  the  re- 
lation of  memory  to  belief  we  shall  find  that  it  is  just  so  far 
as,  without  distinct  avowal,  and  in  violation  of  his  principles, 
he  makes  'impressions  of  memory'  carry  with  them  the 
conception  of  a  real  system,  other  than  the  consciousness  of 
their  own  liveliness,  that  he  gains  a  meaning  for  belief  which 
makes  it  in  any  respect  equivalent  to  the  judgment,  based  on 
inference,  of  actual  science. 

826.  Any  one  who  has  carefully  read  the  chapters  on 
inference  and  belief  will  have  found  himself  frequently 
doubting  whether  he  has  caught  the  author's  meaning  cor- 
rectly. A  clear  line  of  thought  may  be  traced  throughout, 
as  we  have  already  tried  to  trace  it  • — one  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  itself  and  leading  properly  to  the  conclusion  that 
'all  reasonings  are  nothing  but  the  e£fect  of  custom,  and  that 
custom  has  no  influence  but  by  enlivening  the  imagination '' 
— but  its  even  tenour  is  disturbed  by  the  exigency  of  show- 
ing that  proven  fact,  after  turning  out  to  be  no  more  than 
enlivened  imagination,  is  still  what  common  sense  and  phy- 
sical science  take  it  to  be.  According  to  the  consistent 
theory,  ideas  of  memory  are  needed  for  inference  to  cause  or 
effect,  simply  because  they  are  lively.  Such  inference  is 
inference  to  a  '  real  existence,'  that  is  to  an  '  idea  assented 
to,'  that  is  to  a  feeling  having  such  liveliness  as,  not  beinop 
itself  one  of  sense  or  memory,  it  can  only  derive  from  one  of 


'  P.  492. 


'  AboTe,  pangraphe  389  and  ff. 


•  P.  445. 


OBJECTIVE  REALITY  REAPPEARS.  279 

sense  or  memory  through  association  with  it.  That  the  in- 
ferred idea  is  a  cause  or  effect  and,  as  such,  has  ^  real  exist- 
ence,* merely  means  that  it  has  this  derived  liveliness  or  is 
believed ;  just  as  the  reality  ascribed  to  the  impression  of 
memory  lies  merely  in  its  having  this  abundant  liveliness 
from  which  to  communicate  to  its  '  usual  attendant.'  But 
while  the  title  of  an  idea  to  be  reckoned  a  cause  or  effect  is 
thus  made  to  depend  on  its  having  the  derived  liveliness 
which  constitutes  belief,*  on  the  other  hand  we  find  Hume 
from  time  to  time  making  belief  depend  on  causation,  as  on  a 
relation  of  objects  distinct  frx>m  the  lively  suggestion  of  one 
by  the  others*  ^  Belief  arises  only  from  causation,  and  we 
can  draw  no  inference  from  one  object  to  another  except 
they  be  connected  by  this  relation.'  *  The  relation  of  cause 
and  effect  is  requisite  to  persuade  us  of  any  real  existence.'' 
In  the  context  of  these  disturbing  admissions  we  find  a 
reconsideration  of  the  doctrine  of  memory  which  explains 
them,  but  only  throws  back  on  that  doctrine  the  incon- 
sistency which  they  exhibit  in  the  doctrine  of  belief. 

827.  This  reconsideration  arises  out  of  an  objection  to  his  Reality  of 
doctrine  which  Hume  anticipates,  to  the  effect  that  since,  bereT" 
according  to  it,  belief  is  a  lively  idea  associated  ^  to  a  present  *  system* 
impression,'  any  suggestion  of  an  idea  by  a  resembliug  or  to*°sj8tem 
contiguous  impression  should  constitute  belief.     How  is  it  of  judg- 
then  that  *  belief  arises  only  from  causation '  ?     His  answer,  "®^' 
which  must  be  quoted  at  length,  is  as  follows  : — '  'Tis  evident 
that  whatever  is  present  to  the  memory,  striking  upon  the 
mind  with  a  vivacity  which  resembles  an  immediate  impres- 
sion, must  become  of  considerable  moment  in  aU  the  opera- 
tions of  the  mind  and  must  easily  distinguish  itself  above 
the  mere  fictions  of  the  imagination.     Of  these  impressions 
or  ideas  of  the  memory  we  form  a  kind  of  system,  com- 
prehending whatever  we  remember  to  have  been  present 
either  to  our  internal  perception  or  senses,  and  every  par- 
ticular of  that  system,  joined  to  the  present  impressions,  we 
are  pleased  to  call  a  reality.     But  the  mind  stops  not  here. 

*  It  may  be  aa  well  bere  to  point  out  repetition  of  that  unpression  in  the 

the    inconsistency  in    Hume's  use  of  memoTy.    But  in  the  following  section 

'belief/    At  the  end  of  sec.  6  (Fart  the  characteristic  of  belief  is  placed  in 

III.)  the  term  tfl  extended  to  '  impres-  the  derived  liveliness  of  an  idea  as  din- 

sions  of  the  senses  and  memory.'     We  tinct  from  the  immediate  liveliness  of 

are  said  to  belii-ve  when  *  we  feel  an  an  impression. 
immediate  impremon  of  the  senses,  or  a  ^  Pp.  407  &  409. 


280  GENERAL  INTRODUCrnON. 

For  finding  that  with  this  system  of  perceptions  there  is 
another  connected  bj  cnstom  or,  if  you  will,  by  the  relatLOu 
of  canse  and  effect,  it  proceeds  to  the  consideration  of  their 
ideas ;  and  as  it  feels  that  'tis  in  a  manner  necessarily  deter- 
mined to  view  these  particular  ideas,  and  that  the  coistom  or 
relation  by  which  it  is  determined  admits  not  of  the  least 
change,  it  forms  them  into  a  new  system,  which  it  likewise 
dignifies  with  the  title  of  realities.  The  first  of  these  systems 
is  the  object  of  the  memory  and  senses ;  the  second  of  the 
judgment.  'Tis  this  latter  principle  which  peoples  the  world, 
and  brings  us  acquainted  which  such  existences  as,  by  their 
removal  in  time  and  place,  lie  beyond  the  reach  of  the  senses 
and  memory.'  ^ 
Reality  of  328.  From  this  it  appears  that  ^  what  we  are  pleased  to 
^^em^  call  reality '  belongs,  not  merely  to  a  'present  impression,'  but 
other  thiin  to  *  eveiy  particular  of  a  system  joined  to  the  present  im- 
f^i'^yo'  pression'  and  'comprehending  whatever  we  remember  to 
^0^  have  been  present  either  to  our  internal  perception  or  senses/ 
This  admission  already  amounts  io  an  abandonment  of  the 
doctrine  that  reality  consists  in  liveliness  of  feding.  It  can- 
not be  that  every  particular  of  the  system  comprehending 
all  remembered  facts,  which  is  joined  with  the  present  impres- 
sion, can  have  the  vivacity  of  that  impression  either  along 
vriith  it  or  by  successive  communication.  We  can  only  feel 
one  thing  at  a  time,  and  by  the  time  the  vivacity  had  spread 
far  from  the  present  impression  along  the  pai-ticulars  of  the 
system,  it  must  have  declined  from  that  indefinite  degree 
which  marks  an  impression  of  sense.  It  is  not,  then,  the 
derivation  of  vivacity  from  the  present  impression,  to  which 
it  is  joined,  that  renders  the  '  remembered  system '  real ;  and 
what  other  vivacity  can  it  be  ?  It  may  be  said  indeed  that 
each  particular  of  the  system  had  once  the  required  vivaciiy, 
was  once  a  present  impression ;  but  if  in  ceasing  to  be  so,  it 
did  not  cease  to  be  real — if,  on  the  contrary,  it  could  not 
become  a  '  particular  of  the  system,'  counted  real,  without 
becoming  otiier  than  the  '  perishing  existence '  which  an  im- 
pression is — it  is  clear  that  there  is  a  reality  which  lively 
feeling  does  not  constitute  and  which  involves  the  '  fiction ' 
of  an  existence  continued  in  the  absence,  not  only  of  lively 
feeling,  but  of  all  feelings  whatsoever.    So  soon,  in  short, 

>  P.  408. 


'SYSTEM  OF  judgment;  281 

&8  reality  is  ascribed  to  a  system,  which  cannot  be  an  '  im- 
pression' and  of  which  consequently  there  cannot  be  an 
'idea,'  the  first  principle  of  Hume's  speculation  is  aban- 
doned. The  truth  is  implicitly  recognized  that  the  reality 
of  an  individual  object  consists  in  that  system  of  its  relations 
which  only  exists  for  a  conceiving,  as  distinct  from  a  feeling, 
subject,  even  as  the  unreal  has  no  meaning  except  as  a  con- 
fused or  inadequate  conception  of  such  relations ;  and  that 
thus  the  '  present  impression '  is  neither  real  nor  unreal  in 
itself^  but  may  be  equally  one  or  the  other  according  as  the 
relations,  under  which  it  is  conceived  by  the  subject  of  it, 
correspond  to  those  by  which  it  is  determined  for  a  perfect 
intelligence.^ 

329.  A  clear  recognition  of  this  truth  can  alone  explain  it  is  con- 
the  nature  of  belief  as  a  result  of  inference  from  the  known  ®*^^^  ^^ 
to  the  unknown,  which  is,  at  the  same  time,  inference  to  a  which  are 
matter  of  fact.    The  popular  notion,  of  course,  is  that  cer-  °ot  im- 
tain  facts  are  given  by  feeling  without  inference  and  then  S^u7°' 
other  facts  inferred  from  them.     But  what  is  *fact'  taken  andinthii 
to  mean  P    K  a  feeling,  then  an  inferred  feet  is  a  contra-  nation^or 
diction,  for  it  is  an  unfelt  feeling.    K  (as  should  be  the  case)  the  infer- 
it  is  taken  to  mean  the  relation  of  a  feeling  to  something,  ^^^  «^^. 
then  it  already  involves  inference— the  interpretation  of  the  tem  of 
feeling  by  means  of  the  conception  of  a  universal,  self  or  J^^°»®»^** 
world,  brought  to  it — an  inference  which  is  all  inference  in 
posse,  for  it  implies  that  a  universe  of  relations  is  there, 
which  I  must  know  if  I  would  know  the  fall  reality  of  the 
individual  object:    so  that  no  fact  can  be  even  partially 
known  without  compelling  an  inference  to  the  unknown,  nor 
can  there  be  any  inference  to  the  unknown  without  modifi- 
cation of  what  already  purports  to  be  known.     Hume,  trying 
to  carry  out  the  equivalence  of  fact  and  feeling,  and  having 
dearer  sight  than  his  masters,  finds  himself  in  the  presence 
of  this  difficulty  about  inference.     Unless  the  inferred  object 
is  other  than  one  of  sense  (outer  or  inner)  or  of  memory,  there 
is  no  reasoning,  but  only  perception  ;•  but  if  it  is  other,  how 
can  it  be  real  or  even  an  object  of  consciousness  at  all,  since 
consciousness  is  only  of  impressions,  stronger  or  fainter? 
The  only  consistent  way  out  of  the  difficulty,  as  we  have 
seen^  is  to  explain  inference  as  the  expectation  of  the  recur- 

>  See  above,  paragraphs  184  &  18d.  *  Pp.  376  &  388. 


283  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

vence  of  a  feeling  felt  before,  through  which  the  nnknowD 
becomes  known  merely  in  the  sense  that  from  the  repetition 
of  the  recurrence  the  expectation  has  come  to  amount  to  the 
fullest  assurance.     But  according  to  this  explanation  the 
difference  between  the  inferences  of  the  savage  and  those  of 
the  man  of  science  will  lie,  not  in  the  objects  inferred,  but 
in  the  strength   of   the  expectation  that  constitutes  the 
inference*     Meanwhile,  if  a  semblance  of  explanation  has 
been  given  for  the  inference  from  cause  to  effect,  that  from 
efBsct  to  cause  remains  quite  in  the  dark.     How  can  there 
be  inference  from  a  given  feeling  to  that  felt  immediately 
before  it  ? 
Not  fleeing       830.  From  the  avowal  of  such  paradoxical  results,  Hume 
h^'t^tt^*  only  saved  himself  by  reverting,  as  in  the  passage  before  us, 
plain  in-      to  the  popular  view — ^to  the  distinction  between  two  *  systems 
latter^ys-    ^^  reality,'  one  perceived,  the  other  inferred ;  one  *  the  object 
tern  as        of  the  senscs  and  memory,'  the  other  'of  the  judgment' 
fnrced^^^    He  seos  that  if  the  educated  man  erased  from  his  knowledge 
upon  VLB  by  of  the  world  all  ^  feicts '  but  those  for  which  he  has  *  the  evi- 
^^^^         dence  of  his  senses  and  memory,'  his  world  would  be  un* 
peopled ;  but  he  has  not  the  key  to  the  true  identity  between 
the  two  systems.    Not  recognizing  the  inference  already  in- 
volved in  a  fact  of  sense  or  memory,  he  does  not  see  that  it 
is  only  a  further  articulation  of  this  inference  which  gives 
the  fact  of  judgment ;  that  as  the  simplest  tsLGt  for  which 
we  have  the  '  evidence  of  sense '  is  already  not  a  feeling  but 
an  explanation  of  a  feeling,  which  connects  it  by  relations, 
that  are  not  feelings,  with  an  unfelt  universe,  so  inferred 
causes  and  effects  are  explanations  of  these  explanations,  by 
which  they  are  connected  as  mutually  determinant  in  the 
one  world  whose  presence  the  simplest  fact,  the  most  primary 
explanation  of  feeling,  supposes  no  less  than  the  most  com- 
plete.   Not  seeing  this,  what  is  he  to  make  of  the  system 
of  merely  inferred  realities  9    He  will  represent  the  relation 
of  cause  and  effect,  which  connects  it  with  the  '  system  of 
memory,'  as   a  habit  derived  from  the   constant  de  facto 
sequence  of  this  or  that '  inferred '  upon  this  or  that  remem- 
bered idea.     The  mind,  '  feeling '  the  unchangeableness  of 
this  habit,  regards  the  idea,  which  in  virtue  of  it  follows 
upon  the  impression  of  memory,  as  equally  real  with  that  im- 
pression.    In  this  he  finds  an  answer  to  the  two  questions 
which  he  himself  raises :  (a)  '  Why  is  it  that  we  draw  no 


mFERENCE  DEPENDS  ON  FORCE  OF  HABIT.  28S 

inference  from  one  object  to  another,  except  they  be  con- 
nected by  the  relation  of  cause  and  efPect;'  or  (which  is  the 
same,  since  inference  to  an  object  implies  the  ascription  of 
reality  to  it),  *  Why  is  this  relation  requisite  to  persuade  us 
of  any  real  existence  ?'  and  (6),  *  How  is  it  that  tiie  relations 
of  resemblance  and  contiguity  haye  not  the  same  effect?' 
The  answer  to  the  first  is,  that  we  do  not  ascribe  reality  to 
an  idea  recalled  by  an  impression,  unless  we  find  that,  owing 
to  its  customary  sequence  upon  the  impression,  we  cannot 
help  passing  from  the  one  to  the  other.  The  answer  to  the 
second  corresponds.  The  contiguity  of  an  idea  to  an  im- 
pression, if  it  has  been  repeated  often  enough  and  without 
any  '  arbitrary '  action  on  our  part,  is  the  relation  of  cause 
and  effect,  and  thus  does  'persuade  us  of  real  existence.' 
A  '  feigned '  contiguity,  on  the  other  hand,  because  we  are 
conscious  that  it  is  '  of  our  mere  good- will  and  pleasure ' 
that  we  giye  the  idea  that  relation  to  the  impression,  can 
produce  no  belief.  *  There  is  no  reason  why,  upon  the 
return  of  the  same  impression,  we  should  be  determined  to 
place  the  same  object  in  the  same  relation  to  it.'  ^  In  like 
manner  we  must  suppose  (though  this  is  not  so  clearly 
stated)  that  when  an  impression — such  as  the  sight  of  a 
picture — calls  up  a  resembling  idea  (that  of  the  man  de- 
picted) with  much  vivacity,  it  does  not  '  persuade  us  of  his 
real  existence '  because  we  are  conscious  that  it  is  by  the 
'  mere  good- will  and  pleasure '  of  some  one  that  the  likeness 
has  been  produced. 

331.  Now  this  account  has  the  fault  of  being  inconsistent  But  if  m, 
with  Hume's  primary  doctrine,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  the  .'«y»tem  of 
real  an  object  of  thought  in  distinction  from  feeling,  with-  mJTi^- 
out  the  merit  of  explaining  the  extension  of  knowledge  fist  of  feel- 
beyond  the  objects  of  sense  and  memory.     It  turns  upon  a  ISf^t^'^Jx. 
conception  of  the  real,  as  the  unchangeable,  which  the  sue-  perienoeds 
cession  of  feelings,  in  endless  variety,  neither  is  nor  could 
suggest.    It  implies  that  not  in  themselves,  but  as  repre- 
senting such  an  unchangeable,  are  the  feelings  which  '  return 
on  us  whether  we  will  or  no,'  regarded  as  real.     The  peculiar 
sequence  of  one  idea  on  another,  which  is  supposed  to  con- 
stitute the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  is  not,  according  to 
ibia  description  of  it,  a  sequence  of  feelings  simply ;  it  is  a 

>  P.  409. 


284  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

sequence  reflected  on,  found  to  be  unchangeable,  and  thus 
to  entitle  the  sequent  idea  to  the  prerogative  of  reality 
previously  awarded  (but  only  by  the  admission  as  real  of  the 
'  fiction '  of  distinct  continued  existence)  to  the  system  of 
memoiy.     But  while  the   identification  of  the  real  ynih 
feeling  is  thus  in  effect  abandoned,  in  saving  the  appearance 
of  retaining  it,  Hume  makes  his  explanation  of  the  *  system 
of  judgment '  futile  for  its  purpose.    He  saves  the  appear- 
ance by  intimating  that  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  by 
which  the  inferred  idea  is  connected  with  the  idea  of  memory 
and  derives  reality  from  it,  is  only  the  repeated  sequence  of 
the  one  idea  upon  the  other,  of  the  less  lively  feelings  npon 
the  more  lively,  or  a  habit  that  results  from  such  repetition. 
But  if  the  sequence  of  the  inferred  idea  upon  the  other  must 
have  been  so  often  repeated  in  order  to  the  existence  of  the 
relation  which  renders  the  inference  possible,  the  inferred 
idea  can  be  no  new  one,  but  must  itself  be  an  idea  of  memory, 
and  the  question,  how  any  one's  knowledge  comes  to  extend 
beyond  the  range  of  his  memory,  remains  unanswered, 
which  only       332.  What  Hume  himself  seems  to  mean  us  to  understand 
remem-'^"*  is,  that  the  inferred  idea  is  one  of  imagination,  as  distinct 
bered  feel-  from  memory ;  and  that  the  characteristic  of  the  relation  of 
xnuch^aT    causc  and  effect  is  that  through  it  ideas  of  imagination 
thwirUve-    acquire  the  reality  that  would  otherwise   be  confined  to 
fi^^****    impressions  of  sense  and  memory.     But,  according  to  him. 
Bat  how      ideas  of  imagination  only  differ  from  those  of  memory  in 
can  it  have  rcspect  of  their  less  liveliness,  and  of  the  freedom  with  which 
theyhava    ^®  ^^*"^  combine  ideas  in  imagination  that  have  not  been 
b<>en  con-    given  together  as  impressions.  ^     Now  the  latter  difference 
'**ted?'^  is  in  this  case  out  of  the  question.    A  compound  idea  of 
imagination,  in  which  simple  ideas  are  put  together  that 
have  never  been  felt  together,  can  clearly  never  be  connected 
with  an  impression  of  sense  or  memory  by  a  relation  derived 
from  constant  experience  of  the  sequence  of  one  upon  the 
other,  and  specially  opposed  to  the  creations  of  *  caprice.'* 
We  are  left,  then,  to  the  supposition  that  the  inferred  idea, 
as  idea  of  imagination,  is  one  originally  given  as  an  impres- 
sion of  sense,  but  of  which  the  liveliness  has  faded  and 
requires  to  be  revived  by  association  in  the  way  of  cause  and 
effect  with  one  that  has  retained  the  liveliness  proper  to  an 

>  Part  L,  sec.  3 ;  cfl  note  on  p.  416.  '  P.  409. 


CAN  INFEHENCE  give  new  knowledge?         285 

idea  of  metnory.  Then  the  question  recurs,  how  the 
rostoration  of  its  liveliness  bj  association  with  an  impres- 
sion, on  which  it  mast  have  been  constantly  sequent  in 
order  that  the  association  may  be  possible,  is  compatible 
with  the  fact  that  its  liveliness  has  faded.  And  however 
thiR  question  may  be  dealt  mth,  if  the  relation  of  cause  and 
effect  is  merely  custom,  the  extension  of  knowledge  by 
means  of  it  remains  unaccounted  for ;  the  breach  between 
the  expectation  of  the  recurrence  of  familiar  feelings  and 
inductive  science  remains  unfilled ;  Locke's  ^  suspicion '  that 
'  a  science  of  nature  is  impossible,'  instead  of  being  over- 
come, is  elaborated  into  a  system. 

333.  Thus  inference,  according  to  Hume's  account  of  it  inference 
as  originating  in  habit,  suffers  from  a  weakness  quite  as  ^^^  <^^ 
fatal  as  that  which  he  supposes  to  attach  to  it  if  accounted  new^oir- 
for  as  the  work  of  reason.  ^The  work  of  reason'  to  a  ^^^ 
follower  of  Locke  meant  either  the  mediate  perception  of 
likeness  between  ideas,  which  the  discovery  of  cause  or 
effect  cannot  be;  or  else  syllogism,  of  which  Locke  had 
shown  once  for  all  that  it  could  yield  no  ^  instructive  proposi- 
tions.' But  if  an  idea  arrived  at  by  that  process  could  be 
neither  new  nor  real — ^not  new,  because  we  must  have  been 
familiar  with  it  before  we  put  it  into  the  compound  idea 
from  which  we  *  deduce '  it ;  not  real,  because  it  has  not  the 
liveliness  either  of  sensation  or  of  memory — the  idea  in- 
ferred according  to  Hume's  process,  however  real  with  the 
reality  of  liveliness,  is  certainly  not  new.  ^  If  this  means ' 
(the  modem  logician  may  perhaps  reply),  ^  that  according  to 
Hume  no  new  phenomenon  can  be  given  by  inference,  he 
was  quite  right  in  thinking  so.  K  the  object  of  inference 
were  a  separate  phenomenon,  it  would  be  quite  true  that  it 
must  have  been  repeatedly  perceived  before  it  could  be  in- 
ferred, and  that  thus  inference  would  be  nugatory.  But 
inference  is  in  fact  not  to  such  an  object,  but  to  a  uniform 
relation  of  certain  phenomena  in  the  way  of  co-existence 
and  sequence ;  and  what  Hume  may  be  presumed  to  mean 
is  not  that  every  such  relation  must  have  been  perceived 
before  it  can  be  inferred,  much  less  that  it  must  have  been 
perceived  so  constantly  that  an  appearance  of  the  one  phe- 
nomenon causes  instinctive  expectation  of  the  other,  but  (a) 
that  the  phenomena  themselves  must  have  been  given  by 
immediate  perception,  and  {h)  that  the  conception  of  a  law 


388  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

of  causation,  in  virtue  of  which  a  nnifonnity  of  relation  be- 
tween them  is  inferred  from  a  single  instance  of  it,  is  itself 
the  result  of  an  ^'inductio  per  enumerationem  simplicem,''  of 
the  accumulated  experience  of  generations  that  the  same 
sequents  follow  the  same  antecedents.' 
Nor  does         334.  At  the  point  which  our  discussion  has  reached,  few 
meaTfchat^  words  should  be  wanted  to  show  that  thus  to  interpret 
it  cannot     Hume  is  to  read  into  him  an  essentially  alien  theory,  which 
DBw  phe^    has  doubtless  grown  out  of  his,  but  only  by  a  process  of 
nomena,      adaptation  which  it  needs  a  principle  the  opposite  of  his  to 
CM  prove    J^^^y*     Hume,  according  to  his  own  profession,  knows  of 
relations,     no  objects  but  impressions  and  ideas — feelings  stronger  or 
uni^o^^   more  faint — of  no  reality  which  it  needs  thought,  as  distinct 
between  '    from  feeling,  to  constitute.     But  a  uniform  relation  between 
phenome-    phenomena  is  neither  impression  nor  idea,  and  can  only 
exist  for  thought.    He  could  not  therefore  admit  inference 
to  such  relation  as  to  a  real  existence,  without  a  double  con- 
tradiction, nor  does  he  ever  explicitly  do  so.    He  never 
allows  that  inference  is  other  than  a  transition  to  a  certain 
sort  of  feeling,  or  that  it  is  other  than  the  work  of  imagina- 
tion, the  weakened   sense,  as  enlivened  by  custom  to  a 
degree  that  puts  it  almost  on  a  level  with  sense ;  which  im- 
Snch  adis-  plies  that  in  every  case  of  inference  the  inferred  object  is 
a^s^^bie  '"^^  *  uniform  relation — for  how  can  there  be  an  image  of 
with  Home,  uniform  relation  P — and  that  it  is  something  which  has  been 
repeatedly  and  without  exception  perceived  to  follow  another 
before  it  can  be  inferred.     Even  when  in  violation  of  his 
principle  he  has  admitted  a  '  system  of  memory' — a  system  of 
things  which  have  been  felt,  but  which  are  not  feelings, 
stronger  or  fainter,   and  which  are  what  they  are  ovlj 
through  relation — he  still  in  effect,  as  we  have  seen,  makes 
the  *  system  of  judgment,'  which  he  speaks  of  as  inferred 
from  it,  only  the  double  of  it.    To  suppose  that,  on  ihe 
strength  of  a  general  inference,  itself  the  result  of  habit^  in 
regard  to  the  uniformity  of  nature,  particular  inferences  may 
be  made  which  shall  be  other  than  repetitions  of  a  sequence 
already  habitually  repeated,  is,  if  there  can  be  degrees  of 
contradiction,  even  more  incompatible  with  Hume's  prin- 
ciples than  to  suppose  such  inferences  without  it.    If  a  uni- 
formity of  relation  between  particular  phenomena  is  neither 
impression  nor  idea,  even  less  so  is  the  system  of   all 
relations. 


PROOF  AXD  PROBABILITY.  287 

886.  There  is  language,  however,  in  the  chapters  on  ^  Pro-  His  di»- 
babiUty  of  Chances  and  of  Causes,'  which  at  first  sight  might  ^^^^"^  ^' 
seem  to  warrant  the   ascription  of  such  a  supposition  to  biUtjaf 
Hume.    According  to  the  distinction  which  he  inherited  ^^ 
from  Locke  all  inference  to  or  from  causes  or  effects,  since  that  of 
it  does  not  consist  in  any  comparison  of  the  related  ideas,.  ^^^ 
should  be  merely  probable.     And  as  such  he  often  speaks  of  seem  to 
it.     His  originality  lies  in  his  effort  to  explain  what  Locke  ^^^^^^^J' 
had  named ;  in  his  treating  that  *  something  not  joined  on  nature,  as 
both  sides  to,  and  so  not  showing  the  agreement  or  disagree-  deteram- 
ment  of,  the  ideas  under  consideration' which  yet  ^  makes  me  ence. 
believe,'*  definitely  as  Habit.     But  *in  common  discourse,' 
as  he  remarks,  ^we  readily  affirm  that  many  arguments  from 
causation  exceed  probability;"  the  explanation  being  that  in 
these  cases  the  habit  which  determines  the  transition  from 
impression  to  idea  is  ^full  and  perfect.'    There  has  been 
enough  past  experience  of  the  immediate  sequence  of  the 
one  *  perception '  on  the  other  to  form  the  habit,  and  there 
has  been  no  exception  to  it.     In  these  cases  the  '  assurance,' 
though  distinct  from  knowledge,  may  be  fitly  styled  ^  proof,' 
the  term  ^  probability '  being  confined  to  those  in  which  the 
assurance  is  not  complete.     Hume  thus  comes  to  use  ^  proba- 
bility' as  equivalent  to  incompleteness  of  assurance,  and  in 
this  sense  speaks  of  it  as  ^derived  either  from  imperfect 
experience,  or  from  contrary  causes,  or  from  analogy.'  •    It  is 
derived  from  analogy  when  the  present  impression,  which  is 
needed  to  give  vivacity  to  the  *  related  idea,'  is  not  perfectly 
like  the  impressions  with  which  the  idea  has  been  previously 
found  united ;  ^  from  contrary  causes,'  when  there  have  been 
exceptions  to  the  immediate  sequence  or  antecedence  of  the 
one  perception  to  the  other ;  *  from  imperfect  experience ' 
when,  though  there  have  been  no  exceptions,  there  has 
not  been  enough  experience  of  the  sequence  to  form   a 
'full  and  perfect  habit  of  transition.'    Of  this  last  'species 
of  probability,'  Hume  says  that  it  is  a  kind  which,  *  though 
it  naturally  takes  place  before  any  entire  proof  can  exist, 
yet  no  one  who  is  arrived  at  the  age  of  maturity  can 
any  longer  be  acquainted  with.     'Tis  true,  nothing  is  more 
common  than  for  people  of  the  most  advanced  knowledge 
to  have  attained  only  an   imperfect  experience  of  many 

'  Locke.  4, 16,  3.  •  P.  423.  •  P.  439. 


388  GENERAL  XNTBODUCTION. 

particular  eyents ;  whicli  natarallj  produces  only  an  imper- 
fect habit  and  transition ;  but  then  we  must  consider  that 
the  mind,  having  formed  another  observation  concerning  the 
connexion  of  causes  and  effects,  gives  new  force  to  its  reason- 
ing fix>m  that  observation  $  and  by  means  of  it  can  build  an 
argument  on  one  single  experiment,  when  duly  prepared  and 
examined.  What  we  have  found  once  to  follow  from  any 
object  we  conclude  will  for  ever  follow  from  it;  and  if  this 
maxim  be  not  always  built  upon  as  certain,  'tis  not  for  want 
of  a  sufficient  number  of  experiments,  but  because  we  fre- 
quently meet  mth  instances  to  the  contrary ' — ^which  give 
rise  to  the  other  sort  of  weakened  assurance  or  probability^ 
that  from  ^  contrary  causes/  * 
But  this  386.  There  is  a  great  difference  between  the  meaning 

he^only"*'*  which  the  above  passage  conveys  when  read  in  the  light  of 
professes  the  accepted  logic  of  science,  and  that  which  it  conveys 
on^Mo  "*  ^^^^  interpreted  consistently  with  the  theory  in  the  state- 
explain  it  ment  of  which  it  occurs.  WTiether  Hume,  in  writing  as  he 
•^*y«  does  of  that  conclusion  from  a  single  experiment,  which  our 
observation  concerning  the  connexion  of  cause  and  effect 
enables  us  to  draw,  understood  himself  to  be  expressing  his 
own  theory  or  merely  using  the  received  language  provision- 
ally, one  cannot  be  sure ;  but  it  is  certain  that  such  language 
can  only  be  justified  by  those  'maxims  of  philosophers' 
which  it  is  the  purpose  or  effect  of  his  doctrine  to  explain 
away — in  particular  the  maxims  that '  the  connexion  between 
all  causes  and  effects  is  equally  necessary  and  that  its  seem- 
ing imcertainty  in  some  instances  proceeds  from  the  secret 
opposition  of  contrary  causes;'  and  that  *what  the  vulgar 
call  chance  is  but  a  concealed  cause.' '  These  maxims  repre- 
sent the  notion  that  the  law  of  causation  is  objective  and 
universal;  that  all  seeming  limitations  to  it,  all  'probable 
and  contingent  matter,'  are  the  reflections  of  our  ignorance, 
and  exist  merely  ex  parte  nostrd.  In  other  words,  they  re- 
present the  notion  of  that '  continued  existence  distinct  from 
our  perceptions,'  which  with  Hume  is  a  phrase  generated  by 
'propensities  to  feign.'  Tet  he  does  not  profess  to  reject 
them ;  nay,  he  handles  them  as  if  they  were  his  own,  but 
after  a  very  little  of  his  manipulation  they  are  so  '  translated' 
that  they  would  not  know  themselves.   Because  philosophers 

>  Pp.  429  &  430.  *  Ibid. 


LAW  OF  CAUSATION  A  HABIT.  280 

*  allow  that  what  the  vulgar  call  chance  is  nothing  but  a  con- 
cealed cause,'  *  probability  of  causes '  and  '  probability  of 
chances'  may  be  taken  as  equivalent.      But  chance,  as 

*  merely  negation  of  a  cause,'  has  been  previously  ex- 
plained, on  the  supposition  that  causation  means  a  *  perfect 
habit  of  imagination,'  to  be  the  absence  of  such  habit— the 
state  in  which  imagination  is  perfectly  indifferent  in  regard 
to  the  transition  from  a  given  impression  to  an  idea,  because 
the  transition  has  not  been  repeated  often  enough  to  form 
even  the  beginning  of  a  habit.     Such  being  mere  chance, 

*  probability  of  chances '  means  a  state  of  imagination  between 
the  perfect  indifference  and  that  perfect  habit  of  transition, 
which  is  *  necessary  connexion.'  '  Probability  of  causes'  is 
the  same  thing.  Its  strength  or  weakness  depends  simply  on 
the  proportion  between  the  number  of  experiments  (^each 
experiment  being  a  kind  of  chance ')  in  which  A  has  been 
found  to  immediately  follow  B,  and  the  number  of  those  in 
which  it  has  noL^  Mere  chance,  probability,  and  causation 
then  are  equally  states  of  imagination.  The  *  equal  necessity 
of  the  connexion  between  all  causes  and  effects '  means  not 
that  any  *  law  of  causation  pervades  the  universe,'  but  that, 
unless  the  habit  of  transition  between  any  feelings  is  'full  and 
perfect,'  we  do  not  speak  of  these  feelings  as  related  in  the 
way  of  cause  and  effect. 

837.  Interpreted  consistently  with  this  doctrine,  the  pas-  Laws  oi 
sage  quoted  in  the  last  paragraph  but  one  can  only  mean  n*tiiw  are 
that^  when  a  man  has  arrived  at  maturity,  his  experience  of  fled  habit* 
the  sequence  of  feelings  cannot  fail  in  quantity.     He  must  ofexpec- 
have  had  experience  enough  to  form  not  only  a  perfect  habit 
of  transition  from  any  impression  to  the  idea  ot  its  usual 
attendant,  but  a  habit  which  would  aqt  upon  us  even  in  the 
case  of  novel  events,  and  lead  us  after  a  single  experiment  oi 
a  sequence  coniidently  to-  expect  its  recurrence,  if  only  the 
experience  had  been  uniform.     It  is  because  it  has  not  been 
80,  that  in  many  cases  the  habit  of  transition  is  still  imper- 
fect, and  the  sequence  of  A  on  B  not  *  proven,'  but  *  probable.' 
The  probability  then  which  affects  the  imagination  of  the 
matured  man   is  of  the   sort   that  arises   Irom   *  contrary 
causes,'  as  distinct  from  *  imperfect  experience.'     This  is  all 
that  the  passage  in  question  can  fairly  mean.     Such  *  proba- 

»  Pp.  424-428,  432  434. 
VOL.   I.  U 


200  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

bility  *  cannot  become  *  proof,'  or  the  ^  imperfect  habit/ 
perfect,  bj  discovery  of  any  necessary  connexion  or  law  of 
causation,  for  the  perfect  habit  of  transition,  the  imagination 
enlivened  to  the  maximum  by  custom,  is  the  law  of  causation. 
The  formation  of  the  habit  constitutes  the  law :  to  discover 
it  would  be  to  discover  what  does  not  yet  exist.  The  incom- 
pleteness of  the  habit  in  certain  directions,  the  limitation  of 
our  assurance  to  certain  sequences  as  distinct  from  others, 
must  be  equally  a  limitation  to  the  universality  of  the  law. 
It  is  impossible  then  that  on  the  faith  of  the  universality 
of  the  law  we  should  seek  to  extend  the  range  of  that 
assurance  which  is  identical  with  it.  Our  *  observation  con- 
cerning the  connexion  of  causes  and  effects '  merely  means 
the  sum  of  our  assured  expectations,  founded  on  habit,  at 
any  given  time,  and  that  on  the  strength  of  this  we  should 
*  prepare  an  experiment,'  with  a  view  to  assuring  ourselves 
of  a  universal  sequence  from  a  single  instance,  is  as  unac- 
countable as  that,  given  the  instance,  the  assurance  should 
follow. 
Kxperi-  3^8.  The  case  then  stands  thus.     In  order  to  make  the 

ence,  ac-     required  distinction  between  inference  to  real  existence  and 
hu  account  ^^  lively  Suggestion  of  an  idea,  Hume  has  to  graft  on  his 
ofit,cannoi  theory  the  alien  notion  of  an  objective  system,  an  order  of 
of  know-"^^  nature,  represented  by  ideas  of  memory,  and  on  the  strength 
ledge.         of  such  a  uotion  to  interpret  a  transition  from  these  ideas  to 
others,  because  we  cannot  help  making  it,  as  an  objective 
necessity.     Of  such  alien  notion  and  interpretation  he  avails 
himself  in  his  definition  (understood  as  he  means  it  to  be 
understood)  of  cause  as  a  *  natural  relation.'  *     But  he  had 
not  the  boldness  of  his  later  disciples.     Though  he  could  be 
inconsistent  so  far,  he  could  not  be  inconsistent  far  enough 
to  make  his  theory  of  inference  fit  the  practice  of  natural 
philosophers.     Bound  by  his  doctrine  of  ideas  as  copied  from 
^         impressions,  he  can  give  no  account  of  inferred  ideas  that 
shall  explain  the  extension  of  knowledge  beyond  the  expect- 
ation that  we  shall  feel  again  what  we  have  felt  already.     It 
was  not  till  another  theory  of  experience  was  forthcoming 
than  that  given  by  the  philosophers  who  were  most  fond  of 
declaring  their  devotion  to  it,  that  the  procedure  of  science 
could  be  justified.     The  old  philosophy,  we  are  often  truly 

See  above,  paragraph  317. 


HUME  ON  THINKING  SUBSTANCE.  291  j 

told,  had  been  barren  for  want  of  contact  with  fact.     It 

sought  truth  by  a  process  which  really  consisted  in  evolving 

the  ^  connotation '  of  general  names.     The  new  birth  came 

when  the  mind  had  learnt  to  leave  the  idols  of  the  tribe  and 

cave,  and  to  cleave  solely  to  experience.  H  the  old  philosophy,  j 

however,  was  superseded  by  science,  science  itself  required  i 

a  new  philosophy  to  answer  the  question.  What  constitutes  i 

experience?    It  was  in  effect  to  answer  this  question  that  ', 

Locke  and  Hume  wrote,  and  it  is  the  condemnation  of  their  i 

doctrine  that,  according  to  it,  experience  is  not  a  possible 

parent  of  science.     It  is  not  those,  we   know,   who   cry 

*  Lord,  Lord ! '  the  loudest,  that  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  nor  does  the  strongest  assertion  of  our  dependence 
on  experience  imply  a  true  insight  into  its  nature.  Hume 
has  found  acceptance  with  men  of  science  as  the  great  ex- 
ponent of  the  doctrine  that  there  can  be  no  new  knowledge 
without  new  experience.  It  has  not  been  noticed  that  with 
him  such  ^  new  experience  *  could  only  mean  a  further  repe- 
tition of  familiar  feelings,  and  that  if  it  means  more  to  his 
followers,  it  is  only  because  they  have  been  less  faithful  than 
he  was  to  that  antithesis  between  thought  and  reality  which 
they  are  not  less  loud  in  asserting. 

339.  From  the  point  that  our  enquiry  has  reached,  we  can  His  atti- 
anticipate  the  line  which  Hume  could  not  but  take  in  regard  Jj'^^?^ 
to  Self  and  God.  His  scepticism  lay  ready  to  his  hand  in  the  txine  of 
incompatibility  between  the  principles  of  Locke  and  that  t^^^kinR 
doctrine  of  *  linking  substance,'  which  Locke  and  Berkeley 
alike  maintained.     If  the  reader  will  revert  to  the  previous 
part  of  this  introduction,  in  which  that  doctrine  was  dis- 
cussed,^ he  will  find  it  equally  a  commentary  upon  those 
sections  of  the  *  Treatise  on  Human  Nature  *  which  deal  with 

*  immateriality  of  the  soul '  and  *  personal  identity.*  Sub- 
stance, we  saw,  alike  as  ^  extended '  and  as  ^  thinking,'  was  a 

*  creation  of  the  mind,'  yet  real ;  something  of  which  there 
was  an  ^  idea,'  but  of  which  nothing  could  be  said  but  that  it 
was  not  an  *  idea.'  The  ^  thinking '  substance,  moreover,  was 
at  a  special  disadvantage  in  contrast  with  the  ^  extended,' 
because,  in  the  first  place,  it  could  not,  like  body,  be  repre- 
sented as  given  to  consciousness  in  the  feeling  of  solidity,  and 
secondly  it  was  not  wanted.      It  was  a  mere  double  of  the 

»  Above,  paragraphs  127-135, 144-146,  &  192. 
u  2 


each  other, 


893  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

extended  substance  to  which,  as  the  'something  wherein 
they  do  subsist  and  from  which  they  do  result,'  our 
ideas  had  already  been  referred.  Having  no  conception^ 
then,  of  Spirit  or  Self  before  him  but  that  of  the  thinking 
substance,  of  which  Berkeley  had  confessed  that  it  was  not  a 
possible  idea  or  object  of  an  idea,  Hume  had  only  to  apply 
the  method,  by  which  Berkeley  himself  had  disposed  of  ex- 
tended substance,  to  get  rid  of  Spirit  likewise.  This  could 
be  done  in  a  sentence,^  but  having  done  it,  Hume  is  at 
further  pains  to  show  that  immateriality,  simplicity,  and 
identity  cannot  be  ascribed  to  the  soul ;  as  if  there  were  a  soul 
left  to  which  anything  could  be  ascribed. 
As  to  Im-  340.  There  were  two  ways  of  conceiving  the  soul  as  im- 
it**o?^e  ^^^^^y  ^f  which  Hume  was  cognizant.  One,  current 
Soul,  he  among  the  theologians  and  ordinary  Cartesians  and  adopted 
plays  off  by  Locke,  distinguishing  extension  and  thought  as  severally 
Borkeley  divisible  and  indivisible,  supposed  separate  substances — 
!Sk°^k-»  matter  and  the  soul — to  which  these  attributes,  incapable  of 
*  local  conjunction,'  severally  belonged.  The  other,  Berkeley's, 
having  ostensibly  reduced  extended  matter  to  a  succession 
of  feelings,  took  the  exclusion  of  all  *  matter*  to  which 
thought  could  be  'joined'  as  a  proof  that  the  soul  was  im- 
material. Hume,  with  cool  ingenuity,  turns  each  doctrine 
to  account  against  the  other.  From  Berkeley  he  accepts 
the  reduction  of  sensible  things  to  sensations.  Our  feelings 
do  not  represent  extended  objects  other  than  themselves; 
but  we  cannot  admit  this  without  acknowledging  the  con- 
•sequence,  as  Berkeley  himself  implicitly  did,*  that  certain 
of  our  impressions — those  of  sight  and  touch — are  themselves 
extended.  What  then  becomes  of  the  doctrine,  that  the 
soul  must  be  immaterial  because  thought  Ib  not  extended, 
and  cannot  be  joined  to  what  is  so?  Thought  means  the 
succession  of  impressions.  Of  these  some,  though  the 
smaller  number,  are  actually  extended ;  and  those  that  are 
not  so  are  united  to  those  that  are  by  the  '  natural  relations ' 
of  resemblance  and  of  contiguity  in  time  of  appearance,  and 
by  the  consequent  relation  of  cause  and  effect.*  The  rela- 
tion of  local  conjunction,  it  is  true,  can  only  obtain  between 
impressions  which  are  alike  extended.  The  ascription  of  it  to 
such  as  are  unextended  arises  from  the  ^  propensity  in  human 

•  P.  617.  «  See  abore.  pir.  177,  •  Pp.  620-621. 


BERKELEY  CONVICTED  OF  ATHEISM.  29S 

nature,  when  objects  are  united  by  any  relation,  to  add  some 
new  relation  in  order  to  complete  the  union.' '  This  ad- 
mission, however,  can  yield  no  triumph  to  those  who  hold 
that  thought  can  only  be  joined  to  a  ^  simple  and  indivisible 
substance.'  If  the  existence  of  uneztended  impressions 
requires  the  supposition  of  a  thinking  substance  '  simple  and 
indivisible/  the  existence  of  extended  ones  must  equally 
imply  a  thinking  substance  that  has  all  the  properties  of 
extended  objects.  If  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  perceptions 
which  are  unextended  can  belong  to  a  substance  which  is 
extended,  it  is  equally  absurd  to  suppose  that  perceptions 
which  are  extended  can  belong  to  a  substance  that  is  not 
so.  Thus  Berkeley's  criticism  has  indeed  prevailed  against  and  prolan 
the  vulgar  notion  of  a  material  substance  as  opposed  to  a  g^f^^L* 
thinking  one,  but  meanwhile  he  is  himself  '  hoist  with  his 
own  petard.'  If  that  thinking  substance,  the  survival  of 
which  was  the  condition  of  his  theory  serving  its  theological 
purpose,'  is  to  survive  at  all,  it  can  only  be  as  equivalent 
to  Spinoza's  substance,  in  which  '  both  matter  and  thought 
were  supposed  to  inhere.'  The  universe  of  our  experience 
— '  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars ;  the  earth,  seas,  plants,  animals, 
men,  ships,  houses,  and  other  productions,  either  of  art  or 
nature ' — is  the  same  universe  when  it  is  called  *  the  universe 
of  objects  or  of  body,'  and  when  it  is  called  '  the  universe  of 
thought,  or  of  impressions  and  ideas ; '  but  to  hold,  according 
to  Spinoza's  *  hideous  hypothesis,'  that  *  the  universe  of  ob- 
jects or  of  body'  inheres  in  one  simple  uncompounded 
substance,  is  to  rouse  '  a  hundred  voices  of  scorn  and  detes- 
tation;' while  the  same  hypothesis  in  i-egard  to  khe  ^universe 
of  impressions  and  ideas'  is  treated  'with  applause  and 
veneration.'  It  was  to  save  Qod  and  Immortality  that  the 
*  great  philosopher,'  who  had  found  the  true  way  out  of 
the  scholastic  absurdity  of  abstract  ideas,*  had  yet  clung  to 
the  'unintelligible  chimeera'  of  thinking  substance;  and 
after  all,  in  doing  so,  he  fell  into  a  '  true  atheism,'  indistin- 
guishable from  that  which  had  rendered  the  unbelieving 
Jew  '  so  universally  infamous.'^ 

341.  The  supposition  of  spiritual   substance  being  thus  CanBality 
at  once  absurd,  and  of  a  tendency  the  very  opposite  of  the  ^  "P"** 

>  P.  521.  •  See  page  325. 

*  See  aboye,  paragraphs  191  and  foil.  *  Pp.  523-526. 


way. 


294  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

treated  in  purpose  it  was  meant  to  serve,  can  anything  better  be  said 
th6^«ame  f^j^  ^^  supposition  of  a  spiritual  cause?  It  was  to  the 
representation  of  spirit  as  cause  rather  than  as  substance, 
it  will  be  remembered,  that  both  Locke  and  Berkeley  trusted 
for  the  establishment  of  a  Theism  which  should  not  be 
Pantheism.*  Locke,  in  his  demonstration  of  the  being  of 
God,  trusted  for  proof  of  a  first  cause  to  the  inference  from 
that  which  begins  to  exist  to  something  having  power  to 
produce  it,  and  to  the  principle  of  necessary  connexion — 
connexion  in  the  way  of  agreement  of  ideas — ^between  cause 
and  effect  for  proof  that  this  first  cause  must  be  immaterial, 
even  as  its  effect,  viz.  our  thought,  is.  Hume's  doctrine  of 
causation,  of  course,  renders  both  sides  of  the  demonstration 
unmeaning.  Inference  being  only  the  suggestion  by  a 
feeling  of  the  image  of  its  ^  usual  attendant,'  there  can  be 
no  inference  to  that  which  is  not  a  possible  image  of  an  im- 
pression. Nor,  since  causation  merely  means  the  constant 
conjunction  of  impressions,  and  there  is  no  such  contrariety 
between  the  impression  we  call  ^  motion  of  matter '  and  that 
we  call  *  thought,'  any  more  than  between  anv  other  im- 
pressions,^ as  is  incompatible  with  their  constant  conjunction, 
is  there  any  reason  why  we  should  set  aside  the  hourly  ex- 
perience, which  tells  us  that  bodily  motions  are  the  cause  of 
thoughts  and  sentiments.  If,  however,  there  were  that 
necessary  connexion  between  effect  and  cause,  by  which 
Locke  sought  to  show  the  spirituality  of  the  first  cause,  it 
would  really  go  to  show  just  the  reverse  of  infinite  power 
in  such  cause.  It  is  from  our  impressions  and  ideas  that 
we  are  supposed  to  infer  this  cause;  but  in  these — as 
Berkeley  had  shpwn,  and  shown  as  his  way  of  proving  the 
existence  of  God — ^there  is  no  eflScacy  whatever.  They  ai-e 
*  inert.'  If  then  the  cause  must  agree  with  the  effect,  the 
Supreme  Being,  as  the  cause  of  our  impressions  and  ideas, 
must  be  *  inert'  likewise.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  with 
Berkeley  we  cling  to  the  notion  that  there  must  be  e£Scient 
power  somewhere,  and  having  excluded  it  from  the  relation 

*  See  aboTe,  {{  147,  171>  193.  in  eertaip  leading  passages  allow  him- 

«  There  is  no  contrariety,  according  pelf  to  speak  of  contrariety  between 

to  Hume,  except  between  existence  and  idms  (e.ff.  pp.  494  and  536),  which  is 

non-existence  (p.  323)  and  as  all  im-  incidental  evidence  that  the  ideas  thero 

pressions  and  ideas  equally  exist   (p.  treated  of  are  not  so,  according  to  his 

394),  there  can  be  no  contrariety  bo-  account  of  ideas,  at  all 
tween  any  of  them.     He  docs  indeed 


PERSONAL  JDENTITY.  295 

of  ideas  to  each  other  or  of  matter  to  ideas,  find  it  in  the 
direct  relation  of  God  to  ideas,  we  fall  *  into  the  grossest 
impieties  ;'  for  it  will  follow  that  God  ^is  the  author  of  all 
our  volitions  and  impressions.'  * 

342.  Against  the  doctrine  of  a  real  *  identity  of  the  self  or  Dispoaea 
person'  Hume   had   merely  to   exhibit  the   contradictions  g^,]^^^^^„. 
which  Locke's  own  statement  of   it  involves.'     To   have  tity  by 
transferred  this  identity  definitely  from  < matter'  to  con-  ^^^^.^^ 
sciousness  was  in  itself  a  great  merit,  but,  so  transferred,  in  tions  in 
the   absence  of  any  other  theory  of  consciousness  than  lake's 
Locke's,  it  only  becomes  more  obviously  a  fiction.     K  there  it. 

is  nothing  real  but  the  succession  of  feelings,  identity  of 
body,  it  is  true,  disappears  as  inevitably  as  identity  of  mind ; 
and  so  we  have  already  found  it  to  do  in  Hume.*  But 
whereas  the  notion  of  a  unity  of  body  throughout  the  suc- 
cession of  perceptions  only  becomes  contradictory  through 
the  medium  of  a  reduction  of  body  to  a  succession  of  per- 
ceptions, the  identity  of  a  mind,  which  has  been  already 
defined  as  a  succession  of  perceptions,  is  a  contradiction  in 
terms.  There  can  be  *  properly  no  simplicity  in  it  at  one 
time,  nor  identity  at  different ;  it  is  a  kind  of  theatre  where 
several  perceptions  successively  make  their  appearance.'  But 
this  comparison  must  not  mislead  us.  *  They  are  the  suc- 
cessive perceptions  only,  that  constitute  the  mind ;  nor  have 
we  the  most  distant  notion  of  the  place  where  these  scenes 
are  represented,  or  of  the  materials  of  which  it  is  composed.' 
The  problem  for  Hume  then  in  regard  to  personal,  as 
it  had  been  in  regard  to  bodily,  identity  is  to  account  for 
that  ^natural  propension  to  imagine'  it  which  language 
implies. 

343.  The  method  of  explanation  in  each  case  is  the  same.  Y«»tcaD 
He  starts  with  two  suppositions,  to  neither  of  which  he  is  ^^nt^for 
logically  entitled.     One  is  that  we  have  a  ^distinct  idea  of  it  as  a  ^ 
identity  or  sameness,'  t.e.  of  an  object  that  remains  invari-  '^^g^^. 
able  and  uninterrupted  through  a  supposed  variation  of  time'  posing 
— a  supposition  which,  as  we  have  seen,  upon  his  principles  ^®?*j^ 
must  mean  that  a  feeling,  which  is  one  in  a  succession  of  with  him 
feelings,  is  yet  all  the  successive  feelings  at  once.   The  other  a?j*  »"»!><»»• 

>  Pp.  529-531,  a    commentary    on  *  See  above,  §§  134  and  folk 

the  argament  here  given  has  been  in  "  See  above,  §|  30ft  a»d  foli 

effect  supf)tied  in  paragraphs  148-152, 
and  194. 


296  GENERAL  INTRODUCfnON. 

is  that  we  have  an  idea  ^  of  several  different  objects  existing 
in  succession,  and  connected  together  by  a  close '  (natoral) 
'relation' — which  in  like  manner  implies  that  a  feeling, 
which  is  one  among  a  succession  of  feelings,  is  at  the  same 
time  a  consciousness  of  these  feelings  as  successive  and 
under  that  qualification  by  mutual  relation  which  implies 
their  equal  presence  to  it.  These  two  ideas,  which  in  truth 
are  ^  distinct  and  even  contrary,'  ^  we  yet  come  to  confuse  with 
each  other,  because  'that  action  of  the  imagination,  by 
which  we  consider  the  uninterrupted  and  invisible  object, 
and  that  by  which  we  reflect  on  the  succession  of  related 
objects,  are  almost  the  same  to  the  feeling.'  Thus,  though 
what  we  call  our  mind  is  really  a  *  succession  of  related  ob- 
jects,' we  have  a  strong  propensity  to  mistake  it  for  an  '  in- 
variable and  uninterrupted  object.'  To  this  propensity  we 
at  last  so  far  yield  as  to  assert  our  successive  perceptions  to 
be  in  effect  the  same,  however  interrupted  and  variable ;  and 
then,  by  way  of  'justifying  to  ourselves  this  absurdity,  feign 
the  continued  existence  of  the  perceptions  of  our  senses,  to 
remove  the  interruption ;  and  run  into  the  notion  of  a  soul, 
and  %df^  and  vuh%i(mce^  to  disguise  the  variation.'* 
In  origin  344.  It  will  be  seen  that  the  theory,  which  we  have  just 
tion'  the  summarised,  would  merely  be  a  briefer  version  of  that  given 
Mme  aa  in  the  section  on  '  Scepticism  with  regard  to  the  Senses,'  if 
•^^^^'  in  the  sentence,  which  states  its  conclusion,  for  'the  notion 
^'  of  a  soul  and  self  and  substance '  were  written  '  the  notion  of 
a  double  existence  of  perceptions  and  objects.'  •  To  a  reader 
who  has  not  thoroughly  entered  into  the  fusion  of  being  and 
feeling,  which  belongs  to  the  '  new  way  of  ideas,'  it  may 
seem  strange  that  one  and  the  same  process  of  so-called 
confusion  has  to  account  for  such  apparently  disparate  results, 
as  the  notion  of  a  permanently  identical  self  and  that  of  the 
distinct  existence  of  body.  If  he  bears  in  mind,  however, 
that  with  Hume  the  universe  of  our  experience  is  the  same 
when  it  is  called  '  the  universe  of  objects  or  of  body '  and 
when  it  is  called  the  *  universe  of  thought  or  my  impressions 
and  ideas,' ^  he  will  see  that  on  the  score  of  consistency 
Hume  is  to  be  blamed,  not  for  applying  the  same  method  to 
account  for  the  fictions  of  material  and  spiritual  identity, 
but  for  allowing  himself,  in  his  preference  for  physical,  as 

>  Sm  notA  to  I  341.  *  Above,  {{  30(U810. 

•  Pp.  636-686.  «  AboTP,  §  340. 


XJNIVEP.SITir  - 


HUME  REFUl'ES^SlftiJjfiEPP^  ^'  297 

against  theological,  pretension,  to  write  as  if  the  supposition 
of  spiritnal  were  really  distinct  from  that  of  material  iden- 
tity, and  might  be  more  contemptuously  disposed  of.  The 
original  'mistake/  out  of  which  according  to  him  the  two 
fictitioas  suppositions  arise,  is  one  and  the  same ;  and  though 
it  is  a  '  mistake '  without  which,  as  we  haye  found  ^  from 
Hume^s  own  admissions,  we  could  not  speak  even  in  singular 
propositions  of  the  most  ordinary  '  objects  of  sense ' — this 
pen,  this  table,  this  chair — ^it  is  yet  one  that  on  his  princi- 
ples is  logically  impossible,  since  it  consists  in  a  confusion 
between  ideas  that  we  cannot  have.  Of  this  original  '  mis- 
take '  the  fictions  of  body  and  of  its  '  continued  and  distinct 
existence '  are  but  altered  expressions.  They  represent  in 
truth  the  same  logical  category  of  substance  and  relation. 
And  of  the  Self  according  to  Locke's  notion  of  it*  (which  was 
the  only  one  that  Hume  had  in  view),  as  a  *  thinking  thing ' 
within  each  man  among  a  multitude  of  other  thinking  things, 
the  same  would  have  to  be  said.  But  in  order  to  account 
for  the  *  mistake,'  of  which  the  suppositions  of  thinking  and 
material  substance  are  the  correlative  expressions,  and  which 
it  is  the  net  result  of  Hume's  speculation  to  exhibit  at  once 
as  necessary  and  as  impossible,  we  have  found  another  notion 
of  the  self  forced  upon  us — not  as  a  double  of  body,  but  as 
the  source  of  that  *  familiar  theory '  which  body  in  truth  is, 
and  without  which  there  would  be  no  imiverse  of  objects, 
whether  *  bodies '  or  *  impressions  and  ideas,'  at  all. 

846.  Thus  the   more   strongly  Hume  insists    that  *the  PoMibiiity 
identity  which  we  ascribe  to  the  mind  of  man  is  only  a  fictltioiia 
fictitious  one,''  the  more  completely  does  his  doctrine  refute  ideas  im- 
itself.     K  he  had  really  succeeded  in  reducing  those  ^in-  j^i^n'^^^' 
vented '  relations,  which  Locke  had  implicitly  recognised  as  Hume's 
the  framework  of  tlie  universe,  to  what  he  calls  *  natural '  ^^o^*^"*- 
ones — ^to  mere  sequences  of  feeling — the  case  would  have  been 
different.     With  the  disappearance  of  the  conception  of  the 
world  as  a  system  of  related  elements,  the  necessity  of  a 
thinking  subject,  without  whose  presence  to  feelings  they 
could  not  become  such  elements,  would  have  disappeared 
likewise.   But  he  cannot  so  reduce  them.   In  all  his  attempts 
to  do  so  we  find  that  the  relation,  which  has  to  be  explained 
away,  is  pre-supposed  under  some  other  expression,  and  that 

"  Above,  f  J  303  &  304.  «  Abore,  §§  129-132.  «  P.  640. 


288  GENERAL  INTRODUCTION. 

it  is  *  fictitious '  not  in  the  sense  wliicli  Hume's  theory  re- 
quires— ^the  sense,  namely,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  either 
really  or  in  imagination,  either  as  impression  or  idea — but 
in  the  sense  that  it  would  not  exist  if  we  did  not  think  about 
our  feelings.  Thus,  whereas  identity  ought  for  Hume's 
purpose  to  be  either  a  ^  natural  relation,'  or  a  propensity 
arising  from  such  relation,  or  nothing,  we  find  that  accord- 
ing to  his  account,  though  neither  natural  relation  nor  pro- 
pensity, it  yet  exists  both  as  idea  and  as  reality.  He  saves 
appearances  indeed  by  saying^  that  natural  relations  of  ideas 

*  produce  it,'  but  they  do  so,  according  to  his  detailed 
account  of  the  matter,  in  the  sense  that,  the  idea  of  an 
identical  object  being  given,  we  mistake  our  successive 
and  resembling  feelings  for  such  an  object.  In  other  words, 
the  existence  of  numerically  identical  things  is  a  '  fiction,' 
not  as  if  there  were  no  such  things,  but  because  it  implies 
a  certain  operation  of  thought  upon  our  feelings,  a  certain 
interpretation  of  impressions  under  dii-ection  of  an  idea  not 
derived  from  impressions.  By  a  like  equivocal  use  of  *  fiction ' 
Hume  covers  the  admission  of  real  identity  in  its  more  com- 
plex forms — the  identity  of  a  mass,  whose  parts  undergo 
perpetual  change  of  distribution ;  of  a  body  whose  form 
survives  not  merely  the  redistribution  of  its  materials,  but 
the  substitution  of  others;  of  animals  and  vegetables,  in 
which  nothing  but  the  'common  end'  of  the  changing 
members  remains  the  same.  The  reality  of  such  identity  of 
mass,  of  form,  of  organism,  he  quietly  takes  for  granted.* 
He  calls  it  *  fictitious '  indeed,  but  only  either  in  the  sense 
above  given  or  in  the  sense  that  it  is  mistaken  for  mere  nu- 
merical identity. 

346.  After  he  has  thus  admitted,  as  constituents  of  the 

♦  universe  of  objects,'  a  whole  hierarchy  of  ideas  of  which 
the  simple&t  must  vanish  before  the  demand  to  ^  point  out 
the  impression  from  which  it  is  derived,'  we  are  the  less 
surprised  to  find  him  pronouncing  in  conclusion  '  that  the 
true  idea  of  the  human  mind  is  to  consider  it  as  a  system 
of  diflferent  perceptions  or  different  existences,  which  are 


'  P.  543.    '  Identitj  depends  on  the  they  oonsiBt ; '  since,  according  to  Hnme, 

relations  of  ideas ;  and  these  relations  the  *  easiness  of  transition '  is  not  an 

produce  identity  by  means  of  that  easy  effect  of  natural  relation,  but  constitutes 

transition   they  occasion.'    Strictly  it  it.    Of.  pp.  322  &  497,  and  above,  §318. 
should  be  'that  easy  tfansition  in  which  ^  Pp.  636-638. 


IMPORT  OF  HIS  FINAL  ACCOUNT  OF  MIND.  2J)9 

linked  together  by  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect,  and  mu- 
tually produce,  destroy,  influence  and  modify  each  other.' ' 
A  better  definition  than  this,  as  a  definition  of  natv/rey  or  one 
more  charged  with  ^  fictions  of  thought,'  could  scarcely  be 
desired.  If  the  idea  of  such  a  system  is  a  true  idea  at  all, 
which  we  are  only  wrong  in  confusing  with  mere  numerical 
identity,  we  need  be  the  less  concerned  that  it  should  be 
adduced  as  the  true  idea  not  of  nature  but  of  the  ^  human 
mind.'  Having  learnt,  through  the  discipline  which  Hume 
himself  furnishes,  that  the  recognition  of  a  system  of  nature 
logically  carries  with  it  that  of  a  self-conscious  subject,  in 
relation  to  which  alone  *  different  perceptions'  become  a 
system  of  nature,  we  know  that  we  cannot  naturalise  the 

*  human  mind '  without  presupposing  that  which  is  neither 
nature  nor  natural,  though  apart  from  it  nature  would  not  be 
— that  of  which  the  designation  as  *  mind,'  as  *  human,'  as 

*  personal,'  is  of  secondary  importance,  but  which  is  eternal 
self-determined,  and  thinks. 

>  P.  641. 


INTEODUCTION   n. 


1.  In  his  speculation  on  morals,  no  less  than  on  knowledge,  Hnmefe 
Hnme  follows  the  lines  laid  down  by  Locke.    With  ea<;h  ^^^^  ""^ 
there  is  a  precise  correspondence  between  the  doctrine  of  parallel 
nature  and  the  doctrine  of  the  good.     Each  gives  an  account  *j^      . 
of  reason  consistent  at  least  in  this  that,  as  it  allows  reason  nature. 
no  place  in  the  constitution  of  real  objects,  so  it  allows  it 

none  in  the  constitution  of  objects  that  determine  desire  and, 
through  it,  the  will.  With  each,  consequently,  the  *  moral 
faculty,'  whether  regarded  as  the  source  of  tiie  judgments 

*  ought  and  ought  not,*  or  of  acts  to  which  these  judgments 
are  appropriate,  can  only  be  a  certain  faculty  of  feeling,  a 
particular  susceptibility  of  pleasure  and  pain.  The  originality 
of  Hume  lies  in  his  systematic  effort  to  account  for  those 
objects,  apparently  other  than  pleasure  and  pain,  which  de- 
termine desire,  and  which  Locke  had  taken  for  granted  with- 
out troubling  himself  about  their  adjustment  to  his  theory, 
as  resulting  from  the  modification  of  primary  feelings  by 

*  associated  ideas.'  *  Natural  relation,'  the  close  and  uniform 
sequence  of  certain  impressions  and  ideas  upon  each  other, 
is  the  solvent  by  which  in  the  moral  world,  as  in  the  world 
of  knowledge,  he  disposes  of  those  ostensibly  necessary  ideas 
that  seem  to  regulate  impressions  without  being  copied  from 
them ;  and  in  regard  to  the  one  application  of  it  as  much  as 
to  the  other,  the  question  is  whether  the  efficiency  of  the 
solvent  does  not  depend  on  its  secretly  including  tiie  very 
ideas  of  which  it  seems  to  get  rid. 

2.  The  place  held  by  the  'essay  concerning  Human  TJn-  It* relation 
derstanding,'   as   a  sort  of  philosopher's  Bible  in  the  last  ^  ^^^®- 
century,  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the  effect  of  dodtrines  that 


803  INTRODUCTION  H. 

Locke's  only  appear  in  it  incidentally.  It  does  not  profess  to  be  an 
J^^jjj^  ethical  treatise  at  all,  yet  the  moral  psychology  contained  in 
will,  and  the  chapter  *  of  Power'  {II.  21),  and  the  account  of  moral 
*^*™*'  good  and  evil  contained  in  the  chapter  *  of  other  Eelations  * 
(II.  28),  furnished  the  text  for  most  of  the  ethical  speculation 
that  prevailed  in  England,  France,  and  Scotland  for  a  century 
later.  If  Locke's  theory  was  essentially  a  reproduction  of 
Hobbes',  it  was  yet  in  the  form  he  gave  it  that  it  survived 
while  Hobbes  was  decried  and  forgotten.  The  chapter  on 
Power  is  in  eflfect  an  account  of  determination  by  motives. 
More,  perhaps,  than  any  other  part  of  the  essay  it  bears  the 
marks  of  having  been  written  *currente  calcuno.'  In  the 
second  edition  a  summary  was  annexed  which  differs  some- 
what in  the  use  of  terms,  but  not  otlierwise,  from  the  original 
draught.  The  main  course  of  thought,  however,  is  clear 
throughout.  Will  and  freedom  are  at  first  defined  in  all  but 
identical  terms  as  each  a  '  power  to  begin  or  forbear  action 
barely  by  a  preference  of  the  mind'  (§§  5,  8,  71).  Nor  is 
this  identification  departed  from,  except  that  the  term  *  will ' 
is  afterwards  restricted  to  the  *  preference'  or  *  power  of 
preference,'  while  freedom  is  confined  to  the  power  of  acting 
upon  preference ;  in  which  sense  it  is  pointed  out  that  though 
there  cannot  be  freedom  without  will,  there  may  be  will 
without  freedom,  as  when,  through  the  breaking  of  a  bridge, 
a  man  cannot  help  falling  into  the  water,  though  he  prefers 
not  to  do  so.  *  Freedom '  and  *  will '  being  thus  alike  powers, 
if  not  the  same  power,  it  is  as  improper  to  ask  whether  the 
will  is  free  as  whether  one  power  has  another  power.  The 
proper  question  is  whether  man  is  free  (§§  14, 21),  and  the 
answer  to  this  question,  according  to  Locke,  is  that  within 
certain  limits  he  is  free  to  act,  but  that  he  is  not  free  to  wiD. 
When  in  any  case  he  has  the  option  of  acting  or  forbearing 
to  act,  he  cannot  help  preferring,  i.e.  willing,  one  or  other 
alternative.  If  it  is  further  asked.  What  determines  the  will 
or  preference  ?  the  answer  is  that  *  nothing  sets  us  upon  any 
new  action  but  some  uneasiness '  (§  29),  viz.,  the  *  most 
urgent  uneasiness  we  at  any  time  feel '  (§  40),  which  again 
is  always  ^  the  uneasiness  of  desire  fixed  on  some  absent  good, 
either  negative,  as  indolence  to  one  in  pain,  or  positive,  as 
enjoyment  of  pleasure.'  In  one  sense,  indeed,  it  may  be  said 
that  the  will  often  runs  counter  to  desire,  but  this  merely 
raeaus  that  we  *  being  in  this  world  beset  with  sundry  un- 


LOCKE'S  DOCTRINE  OF  MOTIVES.  303 

easinesses,  distressed  with  different  desires,'  the  determination 
of  the  will  by  the  most  pressing  desire  often  implies  the 
counteraction  of  other  desires  which  would,  indeed,  under 
other  circumstances,  be  the  most  pressing,  but  at  the  par- 
ticular time  of  the  supposed  action  are  not  so. 

3.  So  far  Locke's  doctrine  amounts  to  no  more  than  this.  Two 
that  action  is  always  determined  by  the  strongest  motive  •  JS^^n 
and  only  those  who  strangely  hold  that  human  freedom  is  to  always  act 
be  vindicated  by  disputing  that  truism  will  care  to  question  J^^^ 
it.     To  admit  that  the  strongest  desire  always  moves  action  motiye? 
(there  being,  in  fact,  no  test  of  its  strength  but  its  effect  on  ^^^  ^^ 
action)  and  that,  since  every  desire  causes  uneasiness  till  it  stitutee  hit 
is  satisfied,  the  strongest  desire  is  also  the  most  pressing  S^^^i^ 
uneasiness,^  is  compatible  with  the  most  opposite  views  as  to  the 
the  constitution  of  the  objects  which  determine  desire.    To  important 
understand  that  it  is  this  constitution  of  the  desired  object,  ^^"  ^^°* 
not  any  possible  intervention  of  unmotived  willing  between 
the  presentation  of  a  strongest  motive  and  action,which  forms 
the  central  question  of  ethics,  is  the  condition  of  all  clear 
thinking  on  the  subject.     It  is  a  question,  however,  which 
Locke  ignores,  and  popular  philosophy,  to  its  great  confusion, 
has  not  only  continued  to  do  the  same,  but  would  probably 
resent  as  pedantic  any  attempt  at  more  accurate  analysis. 
When  we  hear  of  the  strongest  *  desire '  being  the  uniform 
motive  to  action,  we  have  to  ask,  in  the  first  place,  whether 
the  term  is  confined  to  impulses  determined  by  a  prior  con- 
sciousness, or  is  taken  to  include  those  impulses,  commonly 
called  ^  mere  appetites,'  which  are  not  so  determined,  but 
depend  directly  and  solely  on  the  *  constitution  of  our  bodily 
organs.'    The  appetite  of  hunger  is  obviously  quite  indepen- 
dent of  any  remembrance  of  the  pleasure   of  eating,   yet 
nothing  is  commoner  than  to  identify  with   such   simple 

>  Locke's  language  in  regard  to  '  the  to  distinguish   the  desire    for    fnture 

most  pressing  uneasiness  *  will  not  be  pleasure  from  present  uneasiness,  while 

found  uniformly  consistent.    His  usual  at  the  same  time  implying  that  it  may 

doctrine  is  that  the  strength  of  a  desire,  be  a  strongest  motive   (Cf.  sec.   65). 

as  evinced  by  the  resulting  action,  and  But  if  so,  it  follows  that  there  may  be 

the  uneasiness  which  it  causes  are  in  a  strongest  desire  which   is  not   the 

exact  proportion  to  each  other.  Accord-  most  pressing  uneasiness.  (See  below, 

ing  to  this  yiew,  desire  for  future  happi-  sec.  13.)    Hume,  distinguishing  strong 

ness    can    only    become    a    prevalent  firom  violent  desires,    and    restricting 

motive  when  the  uneasiness  which  it  'uneasiness' to  the  latter,  is  able  to  hold 

causes  has  come    to    outweigh  every  that  it  is  not  alone  the  present  uneasi- 

other  (Cf.  Chap,  xxi..  Sees.  43  and  45).  ness  which  determines  action.     (Boos 

On  the  other  hand,  ho  sometimes  seems  n.,  part  3,  sec.  3,  sub  fin.) 


304 


IXTRODCJCTION    U. 


Distinction 
between 
desires 
that  are, 
and  those 
that  are 
not,  deter- 
mined by 
the 

conception 
of  self. 


Effect  of 

ihis 

conception 

on  the 

ob'ects  of 

human 

desire. 


appetite  the  desire  determined  by  consciousness  of  some  sort, 
as  when  we  say  of  a  drunkard,  who  never  drinks  merely 
because  he  is  thirsty,  that  he  is  governed  by  his  appetite. 
Upon  this  distinction,  however,  since  it  is  recognised  by  current 
psychology,  it  is  less  important  to  insist  than  on  that  between 
the  kinds  of  prior  consciousness  which  may  determine  desire 
proper.  Does  this  prior  consciousness  consist  simply  in  the 
return  of  an  image  of  past  pleasure  with  consequent  hope  of 
its  renewal,  or  is  it  a  conception — ^the  thought  of  an  object 
under  relations  to  self  or  of  self  in  relation  to  certain  objects 
— in  a  word,  self-consciousness  as  distinct  from  simple 
feeling?    • 

4.  Of  desire  determined  in  the  former  way  we  have  expe- 
rience, if  at  all,  in  those  motives  which  actuate  us,  as  we 
say,  ^  unconsciously ' ;  which  means,  without  our  attending 
to  them — feelings  which  we  do  not  fix  even  momentarily  by 
reference  to  self  or  to  a  thing.  As  we  cannot  set  ourselves 
to  recall  such  feelings  without  thinking  them,  without  deter- 
mining them  by  that  reference  to  self  which  we  suppose  them 
to  exclude,  they  cannot  be  described ;  but  some  of  our  actions 
(such  as  the  instinctive  recurrence  to  a  sweet  smell),  seem 
only  to  be  thus  accounted  for,  and  probably  those  actions  of 
animals  which  do  not  proceed  fi?om  appetite  proper  are  to  be 
accounted  for  in  the  same  way.  But  whether  such  actions 
are  facts  in  human  experience  or  no,  those  which  make  us  what 
we  are  as  men  are  not  so  determined.  The  man  whom  we 
call  the  slave  of  his  appetite,  the  enlightened  pleasure-hunter, 
the  man  who  lives  for  his  family,  the  artist,  the  enthusiast 
for  humanity,  are  alike  in  this,  that  the  desire  which  moves 
their  action  is  itself  determined  not  by  the  recurring  image 
of  a  past  pleasure,  but  by  the  conception  of  self.  The  self 
may  be  conceived  of  simply  as  a  subject  to  be  pleased,  or  may 
be  a  subject  of  interests,  which,  indeed,  when  gratified,  pro- 
duce pleasure  but  are  not  produced  by  it — ^interests  in  persons, 
in  beautifdl  things,  in  the  order  of  nature  and  society — ^but 
self  is  still  not  less  the  *  punctum  stans '  whose  presence  to 
each  passing  pleasure  renders  it  a  constituent  of  a  happiness 
which  is  to  be  permanently  pursued,  than  it  is  the  focus  in 
which  the  infiuences  of  that  world  which  only  self-conscious 
reason  could  constitute — the  world  of  science,  of  art,  of  human 
society — must  be  regathered  in  order  to  become  the  personal 
interests  which  move  the  actions  of  individuals.   It  is  in  this 


HAPPINESS  THE  ONLY  MOTIVE.  305 

self-conBciousness  involved  in  our  motives,  in  that  conversion 
into  a  conception  by  reference  to  self,  which  the  image  even 
of  the  merest  animal  pleasure  must  undergo  before  it  can 
become  an  element  in  the  formation  of  character,  that  the 
possibility  of  freedom  lies.  Without  it  we  should  be  as  sinless 
and  as  unpregressive,  as  free  from  remorse  and  aspiration, 
as  incapable  of  selfishness  and  self-denial  as  the  animals. 
Each  pleasure  would  be  taken  as  it  came.  We  should  have 
'the  greatest  happiness  of  which  our  nature  is  capable,' 
without  possibility  of  asking  ourselves  whether  we  might  not 
have  had  more.  It  is  only  the  conception  of  himself  as  a 
permanent  subject  to  be  pleased  that  can  set  man  upon  the 
invention  of  new  pleasures,  and  then,  making  each  pleasure 
a  disappointment  when  it  comes,  produce  the  '  vicious  '  tem- 
per ;  only  thijs  that  can  suggest  the  reflection  how  much  more 
pleasure  he  might  have  had  than  he  has  had,  and  thus  pro- 
duce what  the  moralists  know  as  '  cool  selfishness ' ;  <nily 
this,  on  the  other  hand,  which,  as  *  enlightened  self-love,' 
perpetually  balances  the  attraction  of  imagined  pleasure  by 
the  calculation  whether  it  will  be  good  for  one  as  a  whole. 
Nor  less  is  it  the  conception  of  self,  with  a  '  matter'  more 
adequate  to  its  *  form,'  taking  its  content  not  from  imagined 
pleasure,  but  from  the  work  of  reason  in  the  world  of  nature 
and  humanity,  which  determines  that  personal  devotion  to  a 
work  or  a  cause,  to  a  state,  a  church,  or  mankind,  which  we 
call  self-sacrifice. 

5.  If,  now,  we  ask  ourselves  whether  Locke  recognised  this  Objecta  bo 
function  of  reaspn,  as  self-consciousness,  in  the  determination  xxxske 
of  the  will,  the  answer  must  be  yes  and  no.     His  cardinal  shouldcon- 
doctrine,  as  we  have  sufficiently  seen,  forbade  him  to  admit  ^chide^ 
that  reason  or  thought  could  originate  an  object.     The  only 
possible  objects  with  him  are  either  simple  ideas  or  resoluble 
into  these,  and  the  simple  idea,  as  that  which  we  receive  in 
pure  passivity,  is  virtually  feeling.    Now  no  combination  of 
feelings  (supposing  it  possible  *)  can  yield  the  conception  of 
self  as  a  permanent  subject  even  of  pleasure,  much  less  as  a 
subject  of  social  claims.  It  cannot,  therefore,  yield  the  objects, 
ranging  from  sensual  happiness  to  the  moral  law,  humanity, 
and  God,  of  which  this  conception  is  the  correlative  condition. 
Thus,  strictly  taken,  Locke's  doctrine  excludes  every  motive 
to  action,  but  appetite  proper  and  such  desire  as  is  deter- 

»  Cf  Introduction  to  Vol.  i.,  §§  215  aud  247. 
VOL.  I.  X 


306  INTRODUCTION   U. 

But  he        mined  by  the  imagination  of  animal  pleasure  or  pain,  and  in 
foiMrhem™  ^oing  80  renders  vice  as  well  as  virtue  unaccountable — ^the 
by  treating  excessive  pursuit  of  pleasure  as  well  as  that  dissatisfaction 
r^ire  for    ^^  ^*  which  affords  the  possibility  of  ordinary  reform.     On 
an  object,    the  Other  handy  the  same  happy  intellectual  unscrupulousness, 
Sb  ^  tt^     which  we  have  traced  in  his  theory  of  knowledge,  attends 
ment  gives  him  also  here.     Just  as  he  is  ready  on  occasion  to  treat  any 
pleaBure^  conceived  object  that  determines  sense  as  if  it  were  itself  a 
pleuura.     sensation,  so  he  is  ready  to  treat  any  object  that  determines 
desire,  without  reference  to  the  work  of  .thought  in  its  con- 
struction, as  if  it  were  itself  the  feeling  of  pleasure,  or  of 
uneasiness  removed,  which  arises  upon  satis&ction  of  the 
desire.     In  this  way,  without  professedly  admitting   any 
motive  but  remembered  pleasure — a  motive  which,  if  it  were 
our  only  one,  would  leave  *  man's  life  as  cheap  as  beasts'  ' — 
he  can  take  for  granted  any  objects  of  recognised  interest  as 
accounting  for  the  movement  of  human  life,  and  as  constitu- 
ents of  an  utmost  possible  pleasure  which  it  is  his  own  fault 
if  every  one  does  not  pursue. 
Oonfiision        6.  The  term  ^  happiness '  is  the  familiar  cover  for  confu- 
^^  ^y  sion  between  the  animal  imagination  of  pleasure  and  the 
'happmeetf  conception  of  personal  well-being.     It  is  so  when --having 
the  general  raised  the  question.  What  moves  desire? — Locke  answers, 
desire.        '  happiness,  and  that  alone.'    What,  then,  is    happiness? 

*  Good  and  evU  are  nothing  but  pleasure  and  pain,'  and 
^  happiness  in  its  full  extent  is  the  utmost  pleasure  we  are 
capable  of.'  *  This  is  *  the  proper  object  of  desire  in  general,' 
but  Locke  is  careful  to  explain  that  the  happiness  which 

*  moves  every  particular  man's  desire '  is  not  the  full  extent 
of  it,  but '  so  much  of  it  as  is  considered  and  taken  to  make 
a  necessary  part  of  his  happiness.'  It  is  that  *  wherewith  he 
in  his  present  thoughts  can  satisfy  himself.'  Happiness  in 
this  sense  '  every  one  constantly  pursues,'  and  without  possi- 
bility of  error ;  for '  as  to  present  pleasure  the  mind  never 
mistakes  that  which  is  really  good  or  eviL'     Every  one 

*  knows  what  best  pleases  him,  and  that  he  actually  prefers.' 
That  which  is  the  greater  pleasure  or  the  greater  pain  is 
really  just  as  it  appears  (Ibid.  §§  43,  58,  63).  Now  in  these 
statements,  if  we  look  closely,  we  shall  find  that  four  different 
meanings  of  happiness  are  mixed  up,  which  we  will  take 
leave  to  distinguish  by  letters — (a)  happiness  as  an  abstract 

>  Ibi<L,  sec.  42,  and  cap.  28,  see,  6. 


WHAT  IS  MEANT  BY  HAPPINESS?  807 

conception,  the  snm  of  possible  pleasure ;  (6)  happiness  as 
equivalent  to  the  pleasure  which  at  any  time  surviyes  most 
strongly  in  imagination ;  (c)  happiness  as  the  object  of  the 
self-conscious  pleasure-seeker;  {d)  happiness  as  equivalent 
to  any  object  at  any  time  most  strongly  desired,  not  really  a 
pleasure,  but  by  Locke  identified  with  happiness  in  sense  (6) 
through  the  fallacy  of  supposing  that  the  pleasure  which 
arises  on  satisfstction  of  any  desire,  great  in  proportion  to  the 
strength  of  the  desire,  is  itself  the  object  which  excites 
desire. 

7.  Happiness  ^  in  its  full  extent,'  as '  the  utmost  pleasure  we  'GreateBt 
are  capable  of,*  is  an  unreal  abstraction  if  ever  there  was  ^^  ®^  , 
one    It  is  curious  that  those  who  are  most  forward  to  deny  and 
the  reality  of  universals,  in  that  sense  in  which  they  are  the  ;Plo«rar©  ^ 
condition  of  all  reality,  viz.,  as  relations,  should  yet,  havuig  Simwin^ng 
pronounced  these  to  be  mere  names,   be  found  ascribing  oxpre«- 
reality  to  a  universal,  which  cannot  without  contradiction  be  "°°'' 
supposed  more  than  a  name.     Does  this  '  happiness  in  its 
full  extent'  mean  the  'aggregate  of  possible  enjoyments/ 
of  which  modem  utilitarians  tell  us  9     Such  a  phrase  simply 
represents  the  vain  attempt  to  get  a  definite  by  addition  of 
indefinites.     It  has  no  more  meaning  than    'the  greatest 
possible  quantity  of  time '  would  have.     Pleasant  feelings 
are  not  quantities  that  can  be  added.     Each  is  over  before 
the  next  begins,  and  the  man  who  has  been  pleased  a  million 
times  is  not  really  better  off — ^has  no  more  of  the  supposed 
chief  good  in  possession — than  the  man  who  has  only  been 
pleaseda  thousand  times.  When  we  speak  of  pleasures,  then ,  as 
formingapossiblewhole,wecannot  mean  pleasures  as  feelings, 
and  what  else  do  we  mean  P   Are  we,  then,  by  the  'happiness ' 
in  question  to  understand  pleasure  in  general,  as  might  be 
inferred  from  Locke's  speaking  of  it  as  the  *  object  of  desire 
in  general*?    But  it  is  in  its  mere  particularity  that  each 
pleasure  has  its  being.     It  is  a  simple  idea,  and  therefore, 
as  Locke  and  Hume  have  themselves  taught  us,  momentary, 
indefinable,  in   'perpetual  flux,*   changing   every   moment 
upon  us.     Pleasure  i/n  general,  therefore,  is  not  pleasure,  and 
it  is  nothing  else.   It  is  not  a  conceived  reality,' as  a  relation, 
or  a  thing  determined  by  relations,  is,  since  pleasure  as  feel- 
ing, in  distinction  from  its  conditions  which  are  not  feelings, 
for  the  same  reason  that  it  cannot  be  defined,  cannot  be 
conceived.     It  is  a  mere  name  which  utilitarian  philosophy 

x2 


30»  INTRODUCTION  IL 

baa  mistaken  for  a  thing;  bot  for  which — since  no  one,  what- 
ever his  theory  of  the  desirable,  can  actaallj  desire  either 
the  abstraction  of  pleasure  in  general  or  the  aggregate  of 
possible  pleasures— a  practical  substitute  is  apt  to  be  found 
in  anj  lust  of  the  flesh  that  may  for  the  time  be  the 
strongest. 

8.  Having  begun  by  making  this  fiction  *the  proper 
object  of  desire  in  general,'  Locke  saves  the  appearance  of 
consistency  by  representing  the  particular  pleasure  or  re- 
moval of  uneasiness,  which  he  in  fact  believed  to  be  the 
object  of  every  desire,  as  if  it  were  a  certain  part  of  the 
'  full  extent  of  happiness '  which  the  individual,  having  this 
full  extent  before  him,  picked  out  as  being  what  *in  his 
present  thoughts  would  satisfy  him.'  Nor  does  he  ever  give 
up  the  notion  of  a  '  happiness  in  general,'  in  distinction 
from  the  happiness  of  each  man's  actual  choice,  as  a  possible 
motive,  which  a  man  who  finds  himself  wretched  in  conse- 
quence of  his  actions  may  be  told  that  he  ought  to  have 
adopted.  His  real  notion,  however,  of  the  happiness  which 
is  motive  to  action  is  a  confused  result  of  the  three  other 
notions  of  happiness,  distinguished  above  as  (b),  (c)  and 
In  irliAt  (d).  As  that  about  which  no  one  can  be  mistaken,  ^  happi- 
havpineas  ^^^  *  ^^^  ^^7  be  80  in  sense  (&),  as  the  *  pleasure  which 
is  It  true  suTvives  most  strougly  in  imagination.'  Of  this  it  can  be  said 
^i^reallT  ^^J^  ^^^  ^^  ^^  ^^Ji  ^^^^  *  i*  really  is  just  as  it  appears,' 
just  as  it  and  that  ^  a  man  never  chooses  amiss '  since  he  must '  know 
appears'?  what  best  pleases  him.*  But  with  this,  almost  in  the  same 
breath,  Locke  confuses  ^  happiness '  in  senses  (c)  and  («I). 
So  soon  as  it  is  said  of  an  object  that  it  is  '  taken  by  the 
individual  to  make  a  necessary  part  of  his  happiness,'  it  is 
implied  that  it  is  determined  by  his  conception  of  self.  It 
is  something  which,  as  the  result  of  the  action  of  this  con- 
ception on  his  past  experience,  he  has  come  to  present  to 
himself  as  a  constituent  of  his  personal  good.  Unless 
he  were  conscious  of  himself  as  a  permanent  subject,  he 
could  have  no  conception  of  happiness  as  a  whole  from  rela- 
tion to  which  each  present  object  takes  its  character  as  a 
part.  Nor  of  the  objects  determined  by  this  relation  is  it 
true,  as  Locke  says,  that  they  are  always  pleasures,  or  that 
they  *  are  really  just  as  they  appear.'  Our  readiness  to 
accept  his  statements  to  this  effect,  is  at  bottom  due  to  a 
confusion  between  the  pleasure,  or  removal  of   uneasiness. 


IS   THERE  A  TRUE  ILVPPINESS  AND  A  FALSE  ?    309 

incidental  to  the  satisfaction  of  a  desire  and  the  object  which  In  what 
excites  the  desire.  If  having  explain«jd  desire,  as  Locke  't'i^every 
does,  by  reference  to  the  good,  we  then  allow  ourselves  to  one  b 
explain  the  good  by  reference  to  desire,  it  will  indeed  be  ®°J^'*^ 
true  that  no  man  can  be  mistaken  as  to  his  present  good, 
but  only  in  the  sense  of  the  identical  proposition  that  every 
man  most  desires  what  he  does  most  desire  ;  and  true  also, 
that  every  attained  good  is  pleasure,  but  only  in  the  sense 
that  what  satisfies  desire  does  satisfy  it.  The  man  of  whom 
it  could  be  truly  said,  in  any  other  sense  than  that  of  the 
above  identical  proposition,  that  his  only  objects  of  desire — 
the  only  objects  which  he  '  takes  to  make  a  necessary  part 
of  his  happiness ' — were  pleasures,  would  be  a  man,  as  we 
say,  of  no  interests.  He  would  be  a  man  who  either  lived 
simply  for  pleasures  incidental  to  the  satisfaction  of  animal 
appetite,  or  one  who,  having  been  interested  in  certain 
objects  in  which  reason  alone  enables  us  to  be  interested — 
6.y.,  persons,  pursuits,  or  works  of  art — and  having  found  con- 
sequent pleasure,  afterwards  vainly  tries  to  get  the  pleasure 
without  the  interests.  To  the  former  type  of  character, 
of  course,  the  approximations  are  numerous  enough,  though 
it  may  be  doubted  whether  such  an  ideal  of  sensuality  is 
often  fully  realised.  The  latter  in  its  completeness,  which 
would  mean  a  perfect  misery  that  could  only  issue  in  suicide, 
would  seem  to  be  an  impossibility,  though  it  is  constantly 
being  approached  in  proportion  to  the  unworthiness  and 
fleetingness  of  the  interests  by  which  men  allow  themselves 
to  be  governed,  and  which,  after  stimulating  an  indefinite 
hunger  for  good,  leave  it  without  an  object  to  satisfy  it ;  in 
proportion,  too,  to  the  modem  habit  of  hugging  and  poring 
over  the  pleasures  which  our  higher  interests  cause  us  till 
these  interests  are  vitiated,  and  we  find  ourselves  in  restless 
and  hopeless  pursuit  of  the  pleasure  when  the  interest  which 
might  alone  produce  it  is  gone. 

9.  Just  as  it  is  untrue,  then,  of  the  object  of  desire,  as  No  real 
*  taken  to  be  part  of  one's  happiness '  or  determined  by  the  ^^^ 
conception  of  self,  that  it  is  always  a  pleasure,  so  it  is  un-  desire  cau 
true  that  it  is  always  really  just  as  it  appears,  except  in  the  ?^®'  ^®. 
trifling  sense  that  what  is  most  strongly  desired  is  most  ajpean. 
strongly  desired.     Bather  it  is  never  really  what  it  appears. 
It  is  least  of  all  so  to  the  professed  pleasure-^seeker.     Ob- 
viously, to  the  man  who  seeks   the  pleasure  incidental  to 


310 


INTRODUCTION  H. 


Oan 

liocke  con- 
sistently 
allow  the 
distinction 
between 
true  happi- 
ness ana 
false? 


interests  which  he  has  lost,  there  is  a  contradiction  in  his 
quest  which  for  ever  prevents  what  seems  to  him  desirable 
from  satisfying  his  desire.  And  even  the  man  who  lives 
for  merely  animal  pleasure,  just  because  he  seeks  it  as  part 
of  a  happiness,  never  finds  it  to  be  that  which  he  sought. 
There  is  no  mistake  about  the  pleasure,  but  he  seeks  it  as 
that  which  shall  satisfy  him,  and  satisfy  him,  since  he  is  not 
an  animal,  it  cannot.  Nor  are  our  higher  objects  of  desire 
ever  what  they  seem.  That  is  too  old  a  topic  with  poetis  and 
moralizers  to  need  enforcing.  Each  in  its  turn,  we  know, 
promises  happiness  when  it  shall  have  been  attained,  but 
when  it  is  attained  the  happiness  has  not  come.  The  craving 
for  an  object  adequate  to  oneself,  which  is  the  source  of 
the  desire,  is  still  not  quenched ;  and  because  it  is  not,  nor 
can  be,  even  *  the  joy  of  success '  has  its  own  bitterness. 

10.  The  case,  then,  stands  thus,  Locke,  having  too  much 
*  common  sense  *  to  reduce  all  objects  of  desire  to  the  plea- 
sures incidental  to  satisfactions  of  appetite,  takes  for  granted 
any  number  of  objects  which  only  reason  can  constitute  (or, 
in  other  words,  which  can  only  exist  for  a  self-conscious 
subject)  without  any  question  as  to  their  origin.  It  is 
enough  for  him  that  they  are  not  conscious  inventions  of 
the  individual,  and  that  they  are  related  to  feeling — though 
related  as  determining  it.  This  being  so,  they  are  to  him 
no  more  the  work  of  thought  than  are  the  satisfactions  of 
appetite.  The  conception  of  them  is  of  a  kind  with  the 
simple  remembrance  or  imagination  of  pleasures  caused  by 
such  satisfactions.  The  question  how,  if  only  pleasure  is 
the  object  of  desire,  they  came  to  be  desired  before  there 
had  been  experience  of  the  pleasures  incidental  to  their  attain- 
ment, is  virtually  shelved  by  treating  these  latter  pleasures 
as  if  they  were  themselves  the  objects  originally  desired.  So 
far  consistency  at  least  is  saved.  No  object  but  feeling, 
present  or  remembered,  is  ostensibly  admitted  within  human 
experience.  But  meanwhile,  alongside  of  this  view,  comes 
the  account  of  the  strongest  motive  as  determined  by  the 
conception  of  self— as  something  which  a  man  Hakes  to  be 
a  necessary  part  of  his  happiness,'  and  which  he  is  '  answer- 
able to  himself  for  so  taking.  The  inconsistency  of  such 
language  with  the  view  that  every  desired  object  must  needs 
be  a  pleasure,  would  have  been  less  noticeable  if  Locke  him- 
self had  not  frankly  admitted,  as  the  corollary  of  this  view, 


*DE  GUSTIBUS  NON  EST  DISPUTANDUM.'  gn 

that  the  desired  good  '  is  reallj  just  as  it  appears/  The  Or  respon- 
necessity  of  this  admission  has  always  been  the  rock  on  "^^»*y' 
which  consistent  Hedonism  has  broken.  Locke  himself  has 
scarcely  made  it  when  he  becomes  aware  of  its  dangerous 
consequences,  and  great  part  of  the  chapter  on  Power  is 
taken  up  by  awkward  attempts  to  reconcile  it  with  the  dis- 
tinction between  true  happiness  and  false,  and  with  the 
existence  of  moral  responsibility.  If  greatest  pleasure  is 
the  only  possible  object,  and  the  production  of  such  pleasure 
the  only  possible  criterion  of  action,  and  if  '  as  to  present 
pleasure  and  pain  the  mind  never  mistakes  that  which  is 
really  good  or  evil/  with  what  propriety  can  any  one  be 
told  that  he  might  or  that  he  ought  to  have  chosen  other- 
wise than  he  has  done  9  ^  He  has  missed  the  true  good,'  we 
say,  '  which  he  might  and  should  have  found ' ;  but  ^  good,' 
according  to  Locke,  is  only  pleasure,  and  pleasure,  as  Locke 
in  any  other  connexion  would  be  eager  to  tell  us,  must  mean 
either  some  actual  present  pleasure  or  a  series  of  pleasures 
of  which  each  in  turn  is  present.  If  every  one  without 
possibility  of  mistake  has  on  each  occasion  chosen  the 
greatest  present  pleasure,  how  can  the  result  for  him  at  any 
time  be  other  than  the  true  good,  i.  e.,  the  series  of  greatest 
pleasures,  each  in  its  turn  present,  that  have  been  hitherto 
possible  for  him  9 

11.  A  modem  utilitarian,  if  faithful  to  the  principle  which  ObjectioM 
excludes  any  test  of  pleasure  but  pleasure  itself,  will  prob-  utiliurjan 
ably  answer  that  every  one  does  attain  the  maximum  of  answer 
pleasure  possible  for  him,  his  character  and  circumstances  !^^^J^ 
being  what  they  are ;  but  that  with  a  change  in  these  his  . 
choice  would  be  different.     He  would  still  choose  on  each 
occasion  the  greatest  pleasure  of  which  he  was  then  capable, 
but  this  pleasure  would  be  one  *  truer' — in  the  sense  of 
being  more  intense,  more  durable,  and  compatible  with  a 
greater  quantity  of  other  pleasures— than  is  that  which  he 
actually  chooses.     But  admitting  that  this  answer  justifies 
us  in  speaking  of  any  sort  of  pleasure  as  'truer  '  than  that^ 
at  any  time  chosen  by  any  one — which  is  a  very  large  admis- 
sion, for  of  the  intensity  of  any  pleasure  we  have  no  test  but 
its  being  actually  preferred,  and  of  durability  and  compa- 
tibility with  other  pleasures  the  tests  are  so  vague  that  a 
healthy  and  unrepentant  voluptuary  would  always  have  the 
best  of  it  in  an  attempt  to  strike  the  balance  between  the 


812 


INTRODUCTION  IL 


Aoooidiog 
ro  Locke 
present 
pleasures 
may  be 
cx>inpared 
with 
fature, 


pleasures  he  has  actually  chosen  and  any  truer  sort — it  still 
only  throws  us  back  on  a  further  question.  With  a  better 
character,  it  is  said,  such  as  better  education  and  improved 
circumstances  might  have  produced,  the  actually  greatest 
happiness  of  the  individual — 1.6.,  the  series  of  pleasures 
which,  because  he  has  chosen  them,  we  know  to  have  been 
the  greatest  possible  for  him — might  have  been  greater  or 
*  truer.'  But  the  man's  character  is  the  result  of  his  pre- 
vious preferences ;  and  if  every  one  has  always  chosen  the 
greatest  pleasure  of  which  he  was  at  the  time  capable,  and 
if  no  other  motive  is  possible,  how  could  any  other  than  his 
actual  character  have  been  produced  ?  How  could  that  con- 
ception of  a  happiness  truer  than  the  actual,  of  something 
that  should  be  most  pleasant,  and  therefore  preferred, 
though  it  is  not — a  conception  which  all  education  implies — 
have  been  a  possible  motive  among  mankind  9  To  say  that 
the  individual  is,  to  begin  with,  destitute  of  such  a  concep- 
tion, but  acquires  it  through  education  from  others,  does  not* 
remove  the  diflBculty.  How  do  the  educators  come  by  it  ? 
Common  sense  assumes  them  to  have  found  out  that  more 
happiness  might  have  been  got  by  another  than  the  merely 
natural  course  of  living,  and  to  wish  to  give  others  the 
benefit  of  their  experience.  But  such  experience  implies 
that  each  has  a  conception  of  himself  as  other  than  the 
subject  of  a  succession  of  pleasures,  of  which  each  has  been 
the  greatest  possible  at  the  time  of  its  occurrence ;  and  the 
wish  to  give  another  the  benefit  of  the  experience  implies 
that  this  conception,  which  is  no  possible  image  of  a  feeling, 
-can  originate  action.  The  assumption  of  common  sense, 
then,  contradicts  the  two  cardinal  principles  of  the  Hedon- 
istic philosophy ;  yet,  however  disguised  in  "Hie  terminology 
of  development  and  evolution,  it,  or  some  equivalent  supposi- 
tion, is  involved  in  every  theory  of  the  progress  of  mankind. 
12.  Such  difficulties  do  not  suggest  themselves  to  Locke, 
because  he  is  always  ready  to  fall  back  on  the  language  of 
common  sense  without  asking  whether  it  is  reconcilable 
with  his  theory.  Having  asserted,  without  qualification, 
that  the  will  in  every  case  is  determined  by  the  strongest 
desire,  that  the  strongest  desire  is  desire  for  the  greatest 
pleasure,  and  that '  pleasure  is  just  so  great,  and  no  greater, 
than  it  is  felt,'  he  finds  a  place  for  moral  freedom  and  re- 
sponsibility in  the  ^  power  a  man  has  to  suspend  his  desires 


LOCKE'S  ACCOUNT  OF  RESPONSTBTUTY.  313 

and  stop  them  from  determining  his  will  to  any  action  till  lie  and  desire 
has  examined  whether  it  be  really  of  a  nature  in  itself  and  ^^°^f* 
consequences  to  make  him  happy  or  no.'^  But  how  does  it  parison 
happen  that  there  is  any  need  for  such  suspense,  if  as  to  l""  i>o«" 
pleasure  and  pain  'a  man  never  chooses  amiss/  and  pleasure 
is  the  same  with  happiness  or  the  good  P  To  this  Locke 
answers  that  it  is  only  present  pleasure  which  is  just  as  it 
appears,  and  that  in  '  comparing  present  pleasure  or  pain 
with  future  we  often  make  wrong  judgments  of  them;' 
again,  that  not  only  present  pleasure  and  pain,  but '  things 
that  draw  after  them  pleasure  and  pain,  are  considered  as 
good  and  evil,'  and  that  of  these  consequences  under  the  in- 
fluence of  present  pleasure  or  pain  we  may  judge  amiss.* 
By  tliese  wrong  judgments,  it  will  be  observed,  Locke  does 
not  mean  mistakes  in  discovering  the  proper  means  to  a 
desired  end  (Aristotle's  arivola  ij  Ka6*  ifciurra)^  which  it  is 
agreed  are  not  a  ground  for  blame  or  punishment,  but  wrong 
desires — desires  for  certain  pleasures  as  being  the  greater, 
which  are  not  really  the  greater.  Begarding  such  desires  as 
involving  comparisons  of  one  good  with  another,  he  counis 
them  judgments,  and  (the  comparison  being  incorrectly 
made)  wrong  judgments.  A  certain  present  pleasure,  and  a 
certain  future  one,  are  compared,  and  though  the  future 
would  really  be  the  greater,  the  present  is  preferred ;  or  a 
present  pleasure,  ^drawing  after  it'  a  certain  amount  of  pain, 
is  compared  with  a  less  amount  of  present  pain,  drawing 
after  it  a  greater  pleasure,  and  the  present  pleasure  preferred. 
Li  such  cases  the  man  *  may  justly  incur  punishment '  for  the 
wrong  preference,  because  having  *  the  power  to  suspend  his 
desire  '  for  the  present  pleasure,  he  has  not  done  so,  but  ^  by 
too  hasty  choice  of  his  own  making  has  imposed  on  himself 
wrong  measures  of  good  and  evil.'  *When  he  has  once 
chosen  it,'  indeed,  *and  thereby  it  is  become  part  of  his 
happiness,  it  raises  desire,  and  that  proportionately  gives 
him  uneasiness,  which  determines  his  will.'  But  the  original 
wrong  choice,  having  the  *  power  of  suspending  his  desires,' 
he  might  have  prevented.  In  not  doing  so  he  ^  vitiated  his 
own  palate,'  and  must  be  'answerable  to  himself  for  the 
consequences.* 

18.    Be  sponsibility   for   evil,   then  (with   its    conditions, 
blame,  punishment,  and  remorse)  supposes  that  a  man  has 

>  u.  21,  Sec.  61  and  56.  '  Ibid.,  Sec.  61,  63,  67.  '  Ibid.,  Sec.  66. 


314 


INTRODUCTION  H. 


meant  bj 
*  present' 
and 

•futuw* 
pleasLre  ? 


gone  wrong  in  the  comparison  of  present  with  fatare  plea- 
sure or  pain,  having  had  the  chance  of  going  right.  Upon 
this  we  must  remark  that  as  moving  desire — and  it  is  the 
determination  of  desire  that  is  here  in  question — no  plea- 
sure can  he  present  in  the  sense  of  actual  enjoyment,  or  (in 
Hume's  language)  as  ^  impression,'  but  only  in  memory  or 
imagination,  as  ^idea.'  Otherwise  desire  would  not  be 
desire.  It  would  not  be  that  uneasiness  which,  according 
to  Locke,  implies  the  absence  of  good,  and  alone  moves  action. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  imagination  every  pleasure  must  be 
present  that  is  to  act  as  motive  at  all.  lu  whatever  sense, 
then,  pleasure,  as  pleasure,  i.e.  as  undetermined  by  concep- 
tions, can  properly  be  said  to  move  desire,  every  pleasure  is 
equally  present  and  equally  future.^  For  man,  if  he  only 
felt  and  retained  his  feelings  in  memory,  or  recalled  them  ir 
imagination,  the  only  difference  among  the  imagined  plea- 
sures which  solicit  his  desires,  other  than  difference  of 
intensity,  would  lie  in  the  imagined  pains  with  which  each 
may  have  become  associated.  One  pleasure  might  be 
imagined  in  association  with  a  greater  amount  of  the  pain 
of  waiting  than  another.  In  that  sense,  and  only  in  that^ 
could  one  be  distinguished  from  the  other  as  a  future  plea- 
sure from  a  present  one.  According  as  the  greater  imagined 
intensity  of  the  future  pleasure  did  or  did  not  outweigh  the 
imagined  pain  of  waiting  for  it,  the  scale  of  desire  would 
turn  one  way  or  the  other.  Or  with  one  pleasure,  imagined 
as  more  intense  than  another,  might  be  associated  an  ex- 
pectation of  a  greater  amount  of  pain  to  be  *  drawn  after  it.' 
Here,  again,  the  question  would  be  whether  the  greater 
imagined  intensity  of  pleasure  would  have  the  more  effect  in 
exciting  desire,  or  the  greater  amount  of  imagined  sequent 
pain  in  quenching  it — a  question  only  to  be  settled  by  the 
action  which  results.  In  whatever  sense  it  is  true  of  the 
*  present  pleasure  or  pain,'  that  it  is  really  just  as  it  appears, 
it  is  equally  true  of  the  future.  Whenever  the  determina- 
tion of  desire  is  in  question,  the  statement  that  present  , 
pleasure  is  just  as  it  appears  must  mean  that  the  pleasure 
present  in  imaginoMon  is  so,  and  in  this  sense  all  motive 
pleasui*es  axe  equally  so  present.     Undoubtedly  the  pleasure 

■It  is  noticeable  that  when  Locke  takes  were  an  absent  good,  in  oontiadiction 

to  distinguishing  the  pleasnres    that  to  his  previous  view  that  every  object 

move  desire  into  present  and  future,  he  of  desire  is  an  absent  good.    (Cf.  see. 

speaks  as  if  the  future  pleasure  alone  66  with  sec  67  of  csp.  21.) 


WHAT  IS  IMPLIED  IN  SUSPENDING  DESIRE?        816 

associated  with  the  pain  of  prolonged  expectancy  might  torn  By  the 
oat  greater,  and  that  associated  with  sequent  pain  less,  than  "omwiriBon 
was  imagined ;  but  so  might  a  pleasure  not  thus  associated.  Locke 
Of  every  pleasure  alike  it  is  as  true,  that  while  it  is  imagined  ^^^^^°^^ 
it  is  just  as  it  is  imagined,  as  that  while  felt  it  is  just  as  it  is  meant 
felt ;  and  if  man  only  felt  and  imagined,  there  would  be  no  ^^^o  cpm- 
more  reason  why  he  should  hold  himself  accountable  for  his  pleasures 
imaginations  thsui  for  his  feelings.     Whatever  pleasure  was  equally 
most  attractive  in  imagination  would  determine  desire,  and,  ^^^na- 
through  it,  action,  which  would  be  the  only  measure  of  the  tiont 
amount  of   the   attraction.      It  would  not   indeed  follow 
because  an  action  was  determined  by  the  pleasure  most 
attractive  in  imagination,  that  the  ensuing  pleasure  in  actual 
enjoyment  would  be  greater  than  might  have  been  attained 
by  a  different  action — ^though  it  would  be  very  hard  to  show 
the  contrary — ^but  it  would  follow  that  the  man  attained  the 
greatest  pleasure  of  which  his  nature  was  capable.     There 
would  be  no  reason  why  he  should  blame  himself,  or  be 
blamed  by  others,  for  the  result. 

14.  Thus  on  Locke's  supposition,  that  desire  is  only  moved  and  this 
by  pleasure — ^which   must  mean  imagined  pleasure,   since  Aground 
pleasure,  determined  by  conceptions,  is  excluded  by  the  forreepon- 
supposition  that  pleasure  alone  is  the  ultimate  motive,  and  "^^^^y- 
pleasure  in  actual  enjoyment  is    no  longer    desired — the 
^  suspense  of  desire,'  that  he  speaks  of,  can  only  mean  an 
interval,  during  which  a  competition  of  imagined  pleasures  . 
(one  associated  with  more,  another  with  less,  of  sequent  or 
antecedent  pain)  is   still  going  on,  and  none  has  become 
finally  the  strongest  motive.     Of  such  suspense  it  is  un- 
meaning to  say  that  a  man  has  ^  the  power  of  it,'  or  that, 
when  it  terminates  in  an  action  which  does  not  produce 
so  much  pleasure  as  another  might  have  done,  it  is  because 
the  man  ^  has  vitiated  his  palate,'  and  that  therefore  he  must 
be  ^  answerable  to  himself'  for  the  cousequences.     This  lan- 
guage really  implies  that  pleasures,  instead  of  being  ultimate 
ends,  are  determined  to  be  ends  through  reference  to  an 
object  beyond  them  which  the  man  himself  constitutes ;  that 
it  is  only  through  his  conception  of  self  that  every  pleasure — 
not  indeed  best  pleases  him,  or  is  most  attractive  in  imagina- 
tion— but  becomes  his  personal  good.     It  may  be  that  he 
identifies  his  personal  good  with  the  pleasure  most  attractive 
in  imagination;  but  a  pleasure  so  identified  is  quite  a  different 


316;  INTRODUCTION  IT. 

In  order  to  motive  from  a  pleasure  simply  as  imagined.  It  is  no  longer 
muBt  be  nicre  pleasure  that  the  man  seeks,  but  self-satisfaction 
understood  through  the  pleasure.  The  same  consciousness  of  self, 
ine  deter-  "'^^^^'^  ^^^^  ^™^  ^^  ^^^  ^^^y  coutinues  through  the  act  and  its 
mination  conscqueuces,  Carrying  with  it  the  knowledge  (commonly 
tionrf^*^"  ^^^  ^^®  *  voice  of  conscience ')  that  it  is  to  himself,  as  the 
self.  ultimate  motive,  that  the  act  and  its  consequences,  whether 

in  the  shape  of  natural  pains  or  civil  penalties,  are  due — a 
knowledge  which  breeds  remorse,  and,  through  it,  the  possi- 
bility of  a  better  mind,  ^^hus,  when  Locke  finds  the  ground 
of  responsibility  in  a  man's  power  of  suspending  his  desire 
till  he  has  considered  whether  the  act,  to  which  it  inclines 
him,  is  of  a  kind  to  make  him  happy  or  no,  the  value  of  the 
explanation  lies  in  the  distinction  which  it  may  be  taken  to 
imply,  but  which  Locke  could  not  consistently  admit,  between 
the  imagination  of  pleasure  and  the  conception  of  self  as  t» 
permanent  subject  of  happiness,  by  reference  to  which  an 
imagined  pleasure  becomes  a  strongest  motive.  It  is  not 
really  as  involving  a  comparison  between  imagined  plea- 
sures, but  as  involving  the  consideration  whether  the  greatest 
imagined  plestsure  will  be  the  best  for  one  in  the  long  run, 
that  the  suspense  of  desire  establishes  the  responsibility  of 
man.  Even  if  we  admitted  with  Locke  that  nothing  entered 
into  the  consideration  but  an  estimate  of  ^  future  pleasures ' 
— and  Locke,  it  will  be  observed,  by  supposing  the  estimate 
.  to  include  ^  pleasures  of  a  sort  we  are  unacquainted  with,'^ 
which  is  as  much  of  a  contradiction  as  to  suppose  a  man  in- 
5uenced  by  unfelt  feelings,  renders  this  restriction  unmeaning 
— still  to  be  determined  by  the  consideration  whether  some- 
thing is  good  for  me  on  the  whole  is  to  be  determined,  not 
by  the  imagination  of  pleasure,  but  by  the  conception  of 
self,  though  it  be  of  self  only  as  a  subject  to  be  pleased. 

15.  The  mischief  is  that,  though  his  language  implies  this 
distinction,  he  does  not  himself  understand  it.  *  The  care 
of  ourselves,'  he  tells  us,  *  that  we  mistake  not  imaginary 
for  real  happiness,  is  the  necessary  foundation  of  our  liberty. 
The  stronger  ties  we  have  to  an  unalterable  pursuit  of  happi- 
ness in  general,  which  is  our  greatest  good,  and  which,  as 
such,  our  desires  always  follow,  the  more  are  we  free  from 

>  Cap.  21,  sec  65.    He  has  specially  to  every  one's  wish  and  desire :  could 

in  view  the  pleasures  of  '  another  life,'  we  snppose  their  relishes  as  different 

which  '  being  intended  for  a  state  of  there  as  they  are  here,  yet  the  manna  in 

happiness,  must  certainly  be  agreeable  hearen  will  suit  eveiy  one's  iialate.' 


FOUNDATION  OF  OUR  LIBERTY.  817 

anj  necessary  determination  of  onr  will  to  any  particular  Locke 
action,  till  we  have  examined  whether  it  has  a  tendency  to,  ^^J^n 
or  is  inconsistent  with,  our  real  happiness.'  *  But  he  does  necessity 
not  see  that  the  rationale  of  the  freedom,  thus  paradoxically,  g^^"]^ 
though  truly,  placed  in  the  strength  of  a  tie,  lies  in  that  pineos. 
determination  by  the  conception  of  self  to  which  the  ^  un- 
alterable pursuit  of  happiness '  is  really  equivalent.  To  him 
it  is  not  as  one  mode  among  others  in  which  that  self- 
determination  appears,  but  simply  in  itself,  that  the  con- 
sideration of  what  is  for  our  real  happiness  is  the  *  foundation 
of  our  liberty,'  and  the  consideration  itself  is  no  more  than 
a  comparison  between  imagined  pleasures  and  pains.  Hence 
to  a  reader  who  refuses  to  read  into  Locke  an  interpretation 
which  he  does  not  himself  supply,  the  range  of  moral  liberty 
must  seem  as  narrow  as  its  nature  is  ambiguous.  As  to  its 
range,  the  greater  part  of  our  actions,  and  among  them 
those  which  we  are  apt  to  think  our  best,  are  not  and  could 
not  be  preceded  by  any  consideration  whether  they  are  for 
our  real  happiness  or  no.  In  truth,  they  result  from  a 
character  which  the  conception  of  self  has  rendered  possible, 
or  express  an  interest  in  objects  of  which  this  conception  is 
the  condition,  and  for  that  reason  they  represent  a  will  self- 
determined  and  free ;  but  they  do  not  rest  on  the  foundation 
which  Locke  calls  ^  the  necessary  foundation  of  our  liberty.' 
As  to  the  nature  of  this  liberty,  the  reader,  who  takes  Locke 
at  his  word,  would  find  himself  left  to  choose  between  tho 
view  of  it  as  the  condition  of  a  mind  *  suspended  *  between 
rival  presentations  of  the  pleasant,  and  the  equally  untenable 
view  of  it  as  that  *  liberty  of  indifference,'  which  Locke 
himself  is  quite  ready  to  deride — as  consisting  in  a  choice 
prior  to  desire,  which  determines  what  the  desire  shall  be.' 

16.  This  ambiguous  deliverance  about  moral  freedom,  it 
must  be  observed,  is  the  necessary  result  on  a  mind,  having 
too  strong  a  practical  hold  on  life  to  tamper  with  human 
responsibility,  of  a  doctrine  which  denies  the  originativeness 
of  thought,  and  in  consequence  cannot  consistently  allow  If  an 
any  motive  to  desire,  but  the  image  of  a  past  pleasure  or  ^^^^L 
pain.     The  full  logical  effect  of  the  doctrine,  however,  does  desire  for 
not  appear  in  Locke,  because,  with  his  way  of  taking  any  *°  ^^^^ 

>  Cap.  21,  sec.  51.  become  part  of  his  happiness,  it  raises 

*  Cf.  the  passage  in  sec.  66 :  *  When      desire,'  &C     (Cf.  also  sec.  43  sub  fin.) 
he  has  once  chosen  it,  and  thereby  it  is 


318  INTRODUCTION  II. 

Locke  asks  desire  of  which  the  satisfaction  produces  pleasure  to  have 
tioM^i^bont  pl®^'^^  fo^^  i*fi  object,  he  never  comes  in  sight  of  the  ques- 
origin  of     tion  how  the  manifold  objects  of  actual  human  interest  are 
the  object,  possible  for  a  being  who  only  feels  and  retains,  or  combines, 
his  feelings.     An  action  moved  by  love  of  country,  love  of 
fame,  love  of  a  friend,  love  of  the  beautiful,  would  cause  him 
no  more  difficulty  than  one  moved  by  desire  for  the  renewal 
of  some  sensual  enjoyment,  or  for  that  maintenance  of 
health  which  is  the   condition  of  such  enjoyment  in  the 
future.     If  pressed  about  them,  we  may  suppose  that — avail- 
ing himself  of  the  language  probably  current  in  the  philoso* 
phic  society  in  which  he  lived,   though   it  first    became 
generally  current  in  England  through  the  writings  of  his 
quasi-pupil,  Shaftesbury — he  would  have  said  that  he  found 
in  his  breast  afiections  for  public  good,  as  well  as  for  self- 
good,  the  satisfaction  of  which  gave  pleasure,  and  to  which 
his  doctrine,  that  pleasure  is  the '  object  of  desire  in  general,' 
was  accordingly  applicable.     The  question— of  what  feelings 
or  combinations  of  feelings  are  the  objects  which  excite 
these  several  desires  copies  ? — it  does  not  occur  to  him  to 
But  what    ask.     It  is  only  when  a  class  of  actions  presents  itself  for 
S^artionef  ^^^^^h  a  motive  in  the  way  of  desire  or  aversion  is  not 
which  we    readily  assignable  that  any  difficulty  arises,  and  then  it  is  a 
because  we  difficulty  which  the  assignment  of  such  a  motive,  without 
ought?       any  question  asked  as  to  its  possibility  for  a  merely  feeling 
and  imagining  subject,  is  thought  sufficiently  to  dispose  of. 
Such  a  class  of  actions  is  that  of  which  we  say  that  we 
•ought*  to  do  them,  even  when  we  are  not  compelled  and 
had  rather  not.     We  ought,  it  is  generally  admitted,  to  keep 
our  promises,  even  when  it  is  inconvenient  to  us  to  do  so  and 
no  punishment  could  overtake  us  if  we  did  not.     We  ought 
to  be  just  even  in  ways  that  the  law  does  not  prescribe,  and 
when  we  are  beyond  its  ken ;  and  that,  too,  in  dealing  vnth 
men  towards  whom  we  have  no  inclination  to  be  generous. 
We  ought  even — so  at  least  Locke  *on  the  authority  of 
Revelation '  would  have  said — to  forgive  injuries  which  we 
cannot  forget,  and  if  not  *  to  love  our  enemies  *  in  the  literal 
sense,  which  may  be  an  impossibility,  yet  to  act  as  if  we  did. 
To  what  motive  are  such  actions  to  be  assigned  P 

17.  *  To  desire  for  pleasure  or  aversion  from  pain,'  Locke 
would  answer,  'but  a  pleasure  and  pain  other  than  the 
natural  consequences  of  acts  and  attached  to  them  by  some 


DISTINCrnON  OF  MORAL  GOOD.  319 

lair.*  This  is  the  result  of  his  enquiry  into  *  Moral  Rela-  Their 
tions*  (Book  ii.,  chap.  28).  Good  and  evil,  he  tells  ns,  being  pi^^" 
'nothing  but  pleasure  and  pain,  moral  good  or  evil  is  only  butpiwi- 
the  conformity  or  disagreement  of  onr  actions  to  some  law,  ^i^f^^ 
whereby  good  or  evil,  i.e.,  pleasure  or  pain,  is  drawn  on  us  nature  hat 
by  the  will  and  power  of  the  law-maker/  All  law  according  ^^  ^^' 
to  its  *  true  nature '  is  a  rule  set  to  the  actions  of  others  by  an 
intelligent  being,  having  *  power  to  reward  the  compliance 
with,  and  punish  deviation  from,  his  rule  by  some  good  and 
evil  that  is  not  the  natural  product  and  consequence  of  the 
action  itself;  for  that,  being  a  natural  convenience  or  incon- 
venience, would  operate  of  itself  without  a  law.'  Of  such  law 
there  are  three  sorts.  1.  Divine  Law,  ^  promulgated  to  men 
by  the  light  of  nature  or  voice  of  revelation,  by  comparing 
their  actions  to  which  they  judge  whether,  as  duties  or  sins, 
they  are  like  to  procure  them  happiness  or  misery  from  the 
hands  of  the  Almighty.'  2.  Civil  Law,  *  the  rule  set  by  the 
Commonwealth  to  the  actions  of  those  who  belong  to 
it,'  reference  to  which  decides  *  whether  they  be  criminal  or 
no.'  3.  *The  law  of  opinion  or  reputation,*  according  to 
agreement  or  disagreement  with  which  actions  are  reckoned 
*  virtues  or  vices.'  This  law  may  or  may  not  coincide  with 
the  divine  law.  So  far  as  it  does,  virtues  and  vices  are 
really,  what  they  are  always  supposed  to  be,  actions  ^  in  their 
own  nature '  severally  right  or  wrong.  It  is  not  as  really 
right  or  wrong,  however,  but  only  as  esteemed  so,  that  an 
act  is  virtuous  or  vicious,  and  thus  *  the  common  measure  of 
virtue  and  vice  is  the  approbation  or  dislike,  praise  or  blame, 
which  by  a  tacit  consent  establishes  itself  in  the  several 
societies,  tribes,  and  clubs  of  men  in  the  world,  whereby 
several  actions  come  to  find  credit  or  disgrace  among  them, 
according  to  the  judgment,  maxims,  or  fashions  of  the  place.' 
Each  sort  of  law  has  its  own  *  enforcement  in  the  way  of 
good  and  eviL'  That  of  the  civil  law  is  obvious.  That  of 
the  Divine  Law  lies  in  the  pleasures  and  pains  of  *  another 
world,'  which  (we  have  to  suppose)  render  actions  *  in  their 
own  nature  good  and  evil.'  That  of  the  third  sort  of  law 
lies  in  those  consequences  of  social  reputation  and  dislike 
which  are  stronger  motives  to  most  men  than  are  the  re- 
wards and  punishments  either  of  God  or  the  magistrate 
(chap.  28,  §§5-12). 
18.  *  Moral  goodness  or  evil,'  Locke  concludes,   ^  is  the 


320 


INTRODUCTION  IL 


Confor- 
mitj  to 
law  not 
the  moral 
good^bnt 

A 

toil. 


Hume  has 
to  deriye 
firom  'im- 
pressions' 
the  objects 
which 
Locke 
took  for 
granted. 


conformity  or  non-conformity  of  any  action '  to  one  or  other 
of  the  above  rules  f§  14).  But  such  conformity  or  non-con- 
formity is  not  a  feeling,  pleasant  or  painful,  at  alL  If,  then, 
the  account  of  the  good  as  consisting  in  pleasure,  of  which 
the  morally  good  is  a  particular  form,  is  to  be  adhered  to, 
we  must  suppose  that,  when  moral  goodness  is  said  to  be 
conformity  to  law,  it  is  so  called  merely  with  reference  to  the 
specific  means  of  attaining  that  pleasure  in  which  moral 
good  consists.  Not  the  conception  of  conformity  to  law,  but 
the  imagination  of  a  certain  pleasure,  wiD  determine  the 
desire  that  moves  the  moral  act,  as  every  other  desire. 
The  distinction  between  the  moral  act  and  an  act  judiciously 
done  for  the  sake,  let  us  say,  of  some  pleasure  of  the  palate, 
will  lie  only  in  the  channel  through  which  comes  the  pleasure 
that  each  is  calculated  to  obtain.  If  the  motive  of  an  act 
done  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure  of  eating  differs  from  the 
motive  of  an  act  done  for  the  sake  of  sexual  pleasure  on  ac- 
count of  the  difference  of  the  channels  through  which  the 
pleasures  are  severally  obtained,  in  that  sense  only  can  the 
motive  of  either  of  tiiese  acts,  upon  Locke's  principles,  be 
taken  to  differ  from  the  motive  of  an  act  morally  done.  The 
explanation,  then,  of  the  acts  not  readily  assignable  to 
desire  or  aversion,  of  which  we  say  that  we  only  do  them 
because  we  ^  ought,'  has  been  found.  They  are  so  far  of  a  kind 
with  all  actions  done  to  obtain  or  avoid  what  Locke  calls 
*  future  *  pleasures  or  pains  that  the  diflSculty  of  assigning 
a  motive  for  them  only  arises  from  the  fact  that  their 
immediate  result  is  not  an  end  but  a  means.  They  differ 
from  these,  however,  inasmuch  as  the  pleasure  they  draw 
afber  them  is  not  their  *  natural  consequence,'  any  more  than 
the  pain  attaching  to  a  contrary  act  would  be,  but  is  only 
possible  through  the  action  of  God,  the  magistrate,  or 
society  in  some  of  its  forms. 

19.  Afber  the  above  examination  we  can  easily  anticipate 
the  points  on  which  a  candid  and  clear-headed  man,  who 
accepted  the  principles  of  Locke's  doctrine,  would  see  that 
it  needed  explanation  and  development.  If  all  action  is 
determined  by  impulse  to  remove  the  most  pressing  uneasi- 
ness, as  consisting  in  desire  for  the  greatest  pleasure  of  which 
the  agent  is  at  the  time  capable;  if  this,  again,  means 
desire  for  the  renewal  of  some  *  impression  *  previously  ex- 
perienced, and  aU  impressions  are  either  those  of  sense  or 


HUME'S  ETHICAL  PROBLEM.  321 

deriyed  from  them,  how  are  ^e  to  account  for  those  actual 
objects  of  human  interest  and  pursuit  which  seem  far  re- 
moved from  any  combination  of  animal  pleasures  or  of  the 
means  thereto,  and  specially  for  that  class  of  actions  deter- 
mined, as  Locke  says,  by  expectation  of  pain  or  pleasure 
other  than  the  *  natural  consequence '  of  tihie  act,  to  which 
the  term  *  moral '  is  properly  applied  ?  Hume,  as  we  have 
8een,^  in  accepting  Locke's  principles,  clothes  them  in  a 
more  precise  terminology,  marking  the  distinction  between 
the  feeling  as  originally  felt  and  the  same  as  returning  in 
memory  or  imagination  as  that  between  ^impression  and 
idea,'  and  excluding  original  ideas  of  reflection.  ^  An  im- 
pression first  strikes  upon  the  senses,  and  makes  us  perceive 
heat  or  cold,  thirst  or  hunger,  pleasure  or  pain,  of  some  kind 
or  other.  Of  this  impression  there  is  a  copy  taken  by  the 
mind,  which  remains  after  the  impression  ceases ;  and  this 
we  call  an  idea.  This  idea  of  pleasure  or  pain,  when  it  re- 
turns upon  the  soul,  produces  the  new  impressions  of  desire 
and  aversion,  hope  and  fear,  which  may  properly  be  called 
impressions  of  reflection,  because  derived  from  it'  (a). 
These,  again,  are  copied  by  the  memory  and  imagination, 
and  become  ideas ;  which  perhaps  in  their  turn  give  rise  to 
other  impressions '  (b).  Thus  the  impressions  of  reflection, 
marked  (a),  will  be  determined  by  ideas  copied  fit)m  impres- 
sions of  sense.  If  desires,  they  will  be  desires  for  the  re- 
newal either  of  a  pleasure  incidental  to  the  satisfaction  of 
appetite,  or  of  a  pleasant  sight  or  sound,  a  sweet  taste  or 
smell.  These  desires  and  their  satisfactions  will  again  be 
copied  in  ideas,  but  how  can  the  impressions  (6)  to  which 
these  ideas  give  rise  be  other  than  desires  for  the  renewal  of 
the  original  animal  pleasures?  How  do  they  come  to  be 
desires  as  unlike  these  as  are  the  motives  which  actuate  not 
merely  the  saint  or  the  philanthropist,  but  the  ordinary  good 
neighbour  or  honest  citizen  or  head  of  a  family  ? 

20.  During  the  interval  between  the  publication  of  Locke's  Question* 
essay  and  the  *  Treatise  on  Human  Nature '  there  had  been  J^^  ^  * 
much  writing  on  ethical  questions  in  English.     The  effect  of  ibsuo. 
this  on  Hume  is  plain  enough.     He  writes  with  reference  to 
current  controversy,  and  in  the  moral  part  of  the  treatise 
probably  had  the  views  of  Clarke,  Shaftesbury,  Butler,  and 
Hutcheson  more  consciously  before  him  than  Locke's.     This 
does  not  interfere,  however,  with  the  propriety  of  affiliating 

'  Geneml  Id  trod.,  vol.  i.,  par.  195. 
VOL.  I.  Y 


322  INTRODUCTION  IL 

a.  Is  virtue  Ilim  in  respect  of  his  views  onmoralsy  no  less  than  on  know- 
h^^hex^  ledge,  directly  to  Locke,  whose  principles  and  method  were 
is  con-        in  the  main  accepted  bj  aH  the  moralists  of  that  age.     Bis 


characteristic  lies  in  his  more  consistent  application  of  these, 
and  the  effect  of  cnrrent  controversy  npon  him  was  chiefly 
to  show  him  the  line  which  this  application  most  take.  It 
was  a  controversy  which  tamed  almost  wholly  on  two  points ; 
(a)  the  distinction  between  'interested  and  disinterested,' 
selfish  and  unselfish  affections ;  (&)  the  origin  and  nature  of 
that '  law,'  relation  to  which,  according  to  Locke,  constitutes 
our  action  *  virtuous  or  vicious.'  In  the  absence  of  any  notion 
of  thought  but  as  a  faculty  which  puts  together  simple  ideas 
into  complex  ones,  of  reason  but  as  a  faculty  which  calculates 
means  and  perceives  the  agreement  of  \  ideas  mediately,  it 
could  have  but  one  end. 
Hobbes'  21.  By  the  generation  in  which  Hume  was  bred  the  issue 

^^^  ^   as  to  the  possible  disinterestedness  of  action  was  supposed  to 
tioiL  lie  between  the  view  of  Hobbes  and  that  of  Shaftesbury. 

Hobbes'  moral  doctrine  had  not  been  essentially  different 
from  Locke's,  but  he  had  been  offensively  explicit  on  ques* 
tions  which  Locke  left  open  to  more  genial  views  than  his 
doctrine  logically  justified.  Each  started  from  the  position 
that  the  ultimate  motive  to  every  action  can  only  be  the 
imagination  of  one's  own  pleasure  or  pain,  and  neither  pro- 
perly left  room  for  the  determination  of  desire  by  a  conceived 
object  as  distinct  from  remembered  pleasure.  But  while 
Locke,  as  we  have  seen,  illogically  took  for  granted  desires 
so  determined,  and  thus  made  it  possible  for  a  disciple  to 
admit  any  benevolent  desires  as  motives  on  the  strength  of 
the  pleasure  which  they  produce  when  satisfied,  Hobbes  had 
been  more  severe  in  his  method,  and  had  explained  every 
desire,  of  which  the  direct  motive  could  not  be  taken  to  be 
the  renewal  of  some  animal  pleasure,  as  desire  e^ither  for  the 
power  in  oneself  to  command  such  pleasure  at  will  or  for  the 
pleasure  incidental  to  the  contemplation  of  the  signs  of  such 
power.  Hence  his  peculiar  treatment  of  compassion  and  the 
other  *  social  affections,'  which  it  is  easier  to  show  to  be  un- 
true to  the  facts  of  the  case  than  to  be  other  than  the 
proper  consequence  of  principles  which  Locke  had  rendered 
orthodox.*  Tl  e  counter-doctrine  of  Shaftesbury  holds  water 
just  so  &r  as  it  involves  the  rejection  of  the  doctrine  that 

'  See  'Leviathan/ port  1,  chap.  6. 


HOBBES  AND  SHAFTESBURY.  823 

pleasure  is  fhe  sole  ultimate  motive.  It  becomes  confused 
just  because  its  author  had  no  definite  theory  of  reason,  as 
constitutive  of  objects,  that  could  justify  this  rejection. 

22.  He  begins  with  a  doctrine  that  directly  contradicts  Couotei* 
Locke's  identification  of  the  good  with  pleasure,  and  of  tho  gh^^l'  ^ 
morally  good  with  pleasure  occurring  in  a  particular  way.  biiry. 

*  In  a  sensible  creature  that  which  is  not  done  through  any  ,^^^^5, 
affection  at  all  makes  neither  good  nor  ill  in  the  nature  of 

that  creature ;  who  then  only  is  supposed  good,  when  the 
good  or  ill  of  the  system  to  which  he  has  relation  is  the 
immediate  object  of  some  passion  or  afiPection  moving  him.'  ^ 
This,  it  vdll  be  seen,  as  against  Locke,  implies  that  the  good 
of  a  man's  action  lies  not  in  any  pleasure  sequent  upon  it  to 
him,  but  in  the  nature  of  the  affection  from  which  it  pro- 
ceeds ;  and  that  the  goodness  of  this  affection  depends  on 
its  being  determined  by  an  object  wholly  different  from 
imagined  pleasure — the  c<mceived  good  of  a  system  to  which 
the  man  has  relation,  i.6.,  of  human  society,  which  in 
Shaftesbury's  language  is  the  '  public '  as  distinct  from  the 

*  private '  system.  It  is  not  enough  that  an  action  should 
result  in  good  to  this  system ;  it  must  proceed  fi^m  affection 
for  it.  '  Whatever  is  done  which  happens  to  be  advantageous 
to  the  species  through  an  affection  merely  towards  self-good 
does  not  imply  any  more  goodness  in  the  creature  than  as 
the  affection  itself  is  good.  Let  him  in  any  particular  act 
ever  so  well;  if  at  the  bottom  it  be  that  selfish  affection 
alone  which  moves  him,  he  is  in  himself  still  vicious.'*  Here, 
then,  we  seem  to  have  a  clear  theory  of  moral  evil  as  con- 
sisting in  selfish,  of  moral  good  as  consisting  in  unselfish 
affections.  But  what  exactly  constitutes  a  selfish  affection, 
according  to  Shaftesbury  P  The  answer  that  first  suggests 
itself,  is  that  as  the  unselfish  affection  is  an  affection  for 
public  good,  so  a  selfish  one  is  an  affection  for  '  self-good,' 
the  good  of  the  *  private  system.'  Shaftesbury,  however, 
does  not  give  this  answer.  ^Affection  for  private  good' 
with  him  is  not,  as  such,  selfish ;  it  is  so  only  when  '  exces- 
sive '  and  ^  inconsistent  with  the  interest  of  the  species  or 
public."  This  qualification  seems  at  once  to  efface  the 
clear  line  of  distinction  previously  drawn.  It  puis  ^self- 
affection  '  on  a  level  with  public  affection  which,  according 

>  '  Inquiry  concerning  Virtae/  Book  l,      *  Ibid.,  Boos  i.,  part  2,  see.  2. 
part  2.  sec  1.  '  Ibid.,  Book  n.,  part  1,  sec.  3. 

Y  2 


324  INTRODUCTION  II. 

But  no  to  Shaftesbury,  may  equally  err  on  the  side  of  excess.  It  im- 
^^j^  of  plies  that  an  affection  for  self-good,  if  only  it  be  advantageous 
selfishness,  to  the  species,  may  be  good ;  which  is  just  what  had  been 
previously  denied.  And  not  only  so;  although,  when  the 
self^affections  are  under  view,  they  are  only  allowed  a 
qualified  goodness  in  virtue  of  their  indirect  contribution  to 
the  good  of  the  species,  yet  conversely,  the  superiority  of  the 
affections,  which  have  tibis  latter  good  for  their  object,  is 
urged  specially  on  the  ground  of  the  greater  amount  of 
happiness  or  *  self-good '  which  they  produce. 
kT^r*^''  23.  The  truth  is  that  the  notions  which  Shaftesbury 
notions  of  attached  to  the  terms  ^  affection  for  self-good '  and  ^  affection 
**  d^°^n  ^^^  public  good '  were  not  such  as  allowed  of  a  consistent 
^^^^  ^  opposition  between  them.  They  can  only  be  so  opposed  if, 
on  the  one  hand,  self-good  is  identified  with  pleasure ;  and  on 
the  other,  affection  for  public  good  is  carefully  distinguished 
from  desire  for  that  sort  of  pleasure  of  which  the  gratifica- 
tion of  others  is  a  condition.  But  with  Shaftesbury,  affec- 
tions for  self-good  do  not  represent  merely  those  desires  for 
pleasure  determined  by  self-consciousness— for  pleasure 
presented  as  one's  personal  good — which  can  alone  be 
properly  reckoned  sources  of  moral  evil.  They  include  equally 
mere  natural  appetites — hunger,  the  sexual  impulse,  &c. — 
which  are  morally  neutral,  and  they  do  not  clearly  exclude 
any  desire  for  an  object  which  a  man  has  so  '  made  his  own  ' 
as  to  find  his  happiness — *  self-enjoyment '  or  *  self-good,* 
according  to  Shaftesbury's  language — in  attaining  it,  though 
it  be  as  remote  from  imagined  pleasure  as  possible.^  On 
the  other  hand,  *  affections  for  public  good,'  as  he  describes 
them,  are  not  restricted  to  such  desires  for  the  good  of 
others  as  are  irrespective  of  pleasure  to  self.  They  include 
not  only  such  natural  instincts  as  '  parental  kindness  and 
concern  for  the  nurture  and  propagation  of  the  young,' 
which,  morally,  at  any  rate,  are  not  to  be  distinguished  from 
the  appetites  reckoned  as  affections  for  self-good,  but  also  de- 
sires for  sympathetic  pleasure — ^the  pleasure  to  oneself  which 
arises  on  consciousness  that  another  is  pleased.  Shaftesbury's 
special  antipathy,  indeed,  is  the  doctrine  that  benevolent 
affections  are  interested  in  the  sense  of  having  for  their 
object  a  pleasure  to  oneself,  apart  from  and  beyond  the 
pleasure  of  the  person  whom  they  move  us  to  please ;  but 
'  Book  ii.,  pait  2,  sec.  2. 


WHAT  IS  SELFISHNESS?  325 

tmless  he  regards  them  as  desires  for  the  pleasure  which  Is  all 
the  subject  of  them  experiences  in  the  pleasure  of  another,  pi^g^^^' 
there  is  no  purpose  in  enlarging,  as  he  does  with  much  or  only  too 
unction,  on  the  special  pleasantness  of  the  pleasures  which  ^^i^!  *^ 
they  produce.  With  such  vagueness  in  his  notions  of  what 
he  meant  by  affections  for  *  self-good  '  and  for  *  public  good,' 
it  is  not  strange  that  he  should  have  failed  to  give  any 
tenable  account  of  the  selfishness  in  which  he  conceived 
moral  evil  to  consist.  He  could  not  apply  such  a  term  of 
reproach  to  the  '  self-affections '  in  general,  without  con- 
demning as  selfish  the  man  who  ^  finds  his  own  happiness  in 
doing  good,' and  who  is  in  truth  indistinguishable  &om  one 
to  whom  ^  affection  for  public  good  ^  has  become,  as  we  say, 
the  law  of  his  being.  Nor  could  he  identify  selfishness,  as 
he  should  have  done,  with  all  living  for  pleasure  without  a 
more  complete  rupture  than  he  was  capable  of  with  the 
received  doctrine  of  his  time  and  without  bringing  affection 
for  public  good,  in  the  form  in  which  it  was  most  genera^Uy 
conceived,  and  which  was,  at  any  rate,  one  of  the  forms 
under  which  he  presented  it  to  himself — as  desire,  namely, 
for  sympathetic  pleasure — ^into  the  same  condemnation.  His 
way  out  of  the  diificulty  is,  as  we  have  seen,  in  violation  of 
his  own  principle  to  find  the  characteristic  of  selfishness  not 
in  the  motive  of  any  affection  but  in  its  result ;  not  in  the 
fact  that  a  man's  desire  has  his  own  good  for  its  object, 
which  is  true  of  one  to  whom  his  neighbour's  good  is  as  his 
own,  nor  in  the  fact  that  it  has  pleasure  for  its  object, 
which  Shaftesbury,  as  the  child  of  his  age,  could  scarcely 
help  thinking  was  the  ca^se  with  every  desire,  but  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  stronger  than  is  ^  consistent  wi,th  the  interest 
of  the  species  or  public.* 

24.  Neither  Butler  nor  Hutche^on*  can  claim  to   have  What  hare 
carried  the  ethical  controversy  much  beyond  the  point  at  S"^*"^ 
which  Shaftesbury  left  it.     'Each  took  for  granted  that  the  to  say 
object  of   the   '  self-^affection '    was  necessarily  one's  own  *^^t»t? 
happiness,  and  neither  made  any  distinction  between  living 
for  happiness  and  living  for  pleasure.     They  could  not  then 
identify  selfishness  with  the  living  for  pleasure  without  con- 

*  The  works  of  Hntcheson,  published  duct  of  the  Passions  and  AffectioDft 

before  Hume's  treatise   was  written,  (1728).    In  what  follows  I  wrote  with 

&nd   which  strongly  affected  it)  were  direct    reference    to    his    posthumous 

the  *Enquiiy  into  the  Original  of  our  work,  not  published  till  aner  Hume*s 

Ideas  of  Beauty  and  Virtue*  (1725),  treatise,  but   which    only    reproduces 

i^nd  the  '  Essay  on  the  Nature  and  Con-  more  systematically  his  earlier  views. 


826  INTRODUCTION  EL 

Chiefly,       demning  the  self-affection,  and    with  it  the  best  man's 
tioDB*^     pursuit  of  his  own  highest  good  in  the  service  of  others, 
minate       altogether  as  eviL    Nor  in  the  absence  of  any  better  theoiy 
oWwu^^^  of  the  object  of  the  self-affection  could  the  social  affections, 
which,  according  to  Butler,  are  subject  in  the  developed  man 
to  the  direction  of  self-love,  escape  the  suggestion  that  thej 
are  one  mode  of  the  general  desire  for  pleasure.     Butler  and 
Hutcheson,  indeed,  are  quite  clear  that  they  are  'disin- 
terested '  in  the  sense  of  *  terminating  upon  their  objects/ ' 
This  means,  what  is  sufficiently  obvious  when  once  pointed 
out,  (a)  that  a  benevolent  desire  is  not  a  desire  for  that 
particular  pleasure,  or  rather  *  removal  of  uneasiness,'  which 
shall  ensue  when  it  is  satisfied,  and  (6)  that  it  cannot  origi- 
nally arise  from  the  general  desire  for  happiness,  since  this 
creates  no  pleasures  but  merely  directs  us  to  the  pursuit  of 
objects  found  pleasant  independently  of  it,  and  thus,  if  it 
directs  us  to  benevolent  acts,  presupposes  a  pleasure  pre- 
viously found  in  them.     This,  however,  as  Butler  points  out, 
is  equally  true  of  all  particular  desires  whatever— of  those 
styled  self-regarding,  no  less  than  of  the  social — and  if  it  is 
not  incompatible  with  the  former  being  desires  for  pleasure, 
no  more  is  it  with  the  latter  being  so.    Much  confusion  on 
the  matter,  it  may  be  truly  said,  arises  fix>m  the  loose  way 
in  which  the  words  *  affection '  and  *  passion  *  are  used  by 
Sut  this      Butler  and  his  contemporaries,  not  excluding  Hume  himself, 
does  not      alike  for  appetite,  desire,  and  emotion.     In  every  case  a 
the  view     pleasure  other  than  satisfaction  of  desire  must  have  been 
that  all       experienced  before  desire  can  be  excited  by  the  imagination 
for  plea-      ^^  i^-     -^  pleasure  incidental  to  the  satis&ction  of  appetite 
•ura.  must  have  been  experienced  before  imagination  of  it  could 

excite  the  dedre  of  the  glutton.  In  like  manner,  social 
affection,  as  desire,  cannot  be  first  excited  by  the  pleasure 
which  shall  arise  when  it  is  satisfied;  it  must  previously 
exist  as  the  condition  of  that  pleasure  being  experienced ; 
but  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is  other  than  a  desire  for 
an  imagined  pleasure,  for  that  sympathetic  pleasure  in  the 
pleasure  of  another  in  which  the  social  affection  as  emotion 
consists.  Now  though  Butler  and  Hutcheson  sufficiently 
showed  that  it  is  no  other  pleasure  than  this  which  is  the 
original  object  of  benevolent  desires,  they  did  not  attempt 
to  show  that  it  is  not  this ;  and  failing  such  an  attempt,  the 

>  See  in  Preface  to  Butler's  Sermons,  pursuit*  &c ;  also  the  early  part  of 
the  part  relating  to  Sermon  XI.,  *  Be-  Srnnon  XL,  *  Every  man  hath  a  gene- 
aides,   the  only  idea  of  an  interested       ral  desire/  &C 


WHAT  IS  DISINTERESTED  AFFECTION?  827 

received  doctrine  that  the  object  of  all  desire,  social  and 
self-regarding  alike,  is  pleasure  of  one  sort  or  another, 
YTOuld  naturally  be  taken  to  stand.  This  admitted,  there 
can  be  nothing  in  the  fact  that  a  certain  pleasure  depends 
on  the  pleasure  of  another,  and  that  a  certain  other  does  not, 
to  entitle  an  action  moved  by  desire  for  the  former  sort  of 
pleasure  to  be  called  unselfish  in  the  way  of  praise,  and  one 
moved  by  desire  for  the  latter  sort  selfish  in  the  way  of 
reproach.  The  motive — desire  for  his  own  pleasure — is  the 
same  to  the  doer  in  both  cases.  The  distinction  between  the 
acts  can  only  lie  in  that  which  Shaftesbury  had  said  could 
not  constitute  moral  good  or  iU — in  the  consequences  by 
which  society  judges  of  them,  but  which  do  not  form  the 
motive  of  the  agent.  In  other  words,  it  will  be  a  distinction 
fixed  by  that  law  of  opinion  or  reputation,  in  which  Locke 
had  found  the  common  measure  of  virtue  and  vice,  though 
he  had  not  entered  on  the  question  of  the  considerations  by 
which  that  law  is  formed. 

25.  Such  a  conclusion  would  lie  ready  to  hand  for  such  a  Of  moral 
reader  of  Butler  and  Huteheson  as  we  may  suppose  Hume  ^^"^ 
to  have  been,  but  it  is  needless  to  say  that  it  is  not  that  at  acooaot 
which  they  themselves   arrive.     Butler,   indeed,   distinctly  <'^''^* 
refuses  to  identify  moral  good  and  evil  respectively  with 
disinterested  and  interested  action,'   but  neither  does  he 
admit  that  desire  for  pleasure  or  aversion  from  gain  is  the 
uniform  motive  of  action  in  such  a  way  as  to  compel  the 
conclusion  that  moral  good  and  ill  represent  a  distinction, 
not  of  motives,  but  of  consequences  of  action  contemplated 
by  the  onlooker.     An  act  is  morally  good,  according  to  him, 
when  it  is  approved  by  the  '  reflex  faculty  of  approbation,' 
bad  when  it  is  disapproved,  but  what  it  is  that  this  *  faculty  * 
approves  he  never  distinctly  tells  us.    The  good  is  what 
*  conscience '  approves,  and  conscience  is  what  approves  the 
good — ^that  is  the  circle  out  of  which  he  never  escapes.     If 
we  insist  on  extracting  &om  him  any  more  satisfactory  con- 
clusion as  to  the  object  of  moral  approbation,  it  must  be 
that  it  is   the  object   which  *  self-love'  pursues,  i.e.,  the 
greatest  happiness  of  the  individual,  a  conclusion  yhieh  in 

>  See  preface  to  Sermons  (about  four  the  second  sermon,  mnst  be  imdfirstood 

pages  from  the  end  in  most  editions) : —  to  mean  an  action  '  suitable  to  our  whole 

'The  goodness  or  badness  of  actions  does  nature/  as  containing  a  principle  of 

not  arise  hence/  &c      The  conclusion  *  reflex  approbation/    In  other  words, 

he  there  arrives  at  is  that  a  good  action  the  good  action  is  so  because  approved 

is  one  which  'becomes  such  creatures  as  by  conscience, 
we  are' ;  and  this,  read  in  the  light  of 


328 


raTRODUCTION  IL 


Hutchd- 
fion'8  in- 
oonsistent 
with  his 
doctrine 
thnt reason 
gives  DO 


Source  of 
the  moral 
judgment. 


Receiyed 
nation  of 


Bome  places  he  certainlj  adopts.^  Hutcheson,  on  the  other 
hand,  gives  a  plain  definition  of  the  object  which  this  faculty 
approves.  It  consists  in  ^  affections  tending  to  the  happiness 
of  others  and  the  moral  perfection  of  the  mind  possessing 
them.*  If  in  this  definition  by  *  tending  to'  may  be  under- 
stood *  of  which  the  motive  is  * — an  interpretation  which 
the  general  tenor  of  Hutcheson's  view  would  justify — it 
implies  in  effect  that  the  morally  good  lies  in  desires  ol 
which  the  object  is  not  pleasure.  That  desire  for  moral 
perfection,  if  tiiere  is  such  a  thing,  is  not  desire  for  pleasure 
is  obvious  enough;  nor  could  desire  for  the  happiness  of 
others  be  taken  to  be  so  except  through  confusion  between 
determination  by  the  conception  of  another's  good,  to  which 
his  apparent  pleasure  is  rightly  or  wrongly  taken  as  a 
guide,  and  by  the  imagination  of  a  pleasure  to  be  experienced 
by  oneself  in  sympathy  with  the  pleasure  of  another.  Nor 
is  it  doubtful  that  Hutcheson  himself,  though  he  might 
have  hesitated  to  identify  moral  evil,  as  selfishness,  with  the 
living  for  pleasure,  yet  understood  by  the  morally  good  the 
living  for  objects  wholly  different  from  pleasure.  The 
question  is  whether  the  recognition  of  such  motives  is 
logically  compatible  with  his  doctrine  that  reason  gives  no 
ends,  but  is  only  a  *  subservient  power '  of  calculating  means. 
If  feeling,  undetermined  by  thought  or  reason,  can  alone 
supply  motives,  and  of  feeling,  thus  undetermined,  nothing 
can  be  said  but  that  it  is  pleasant  or  painful,  what  motive 
can  there  be  but  imagination  of  one's  own  pleasure  or  pain 
— Qne*8  owfif  for  if  imagination  is  merely  the  return  of 
feeling  in  fainter  form,  no  one  can  imagine  any  feeling,  any 
more  than  he  can  originally  feel  it,  except  as  his  own  ? 

26.  The  work  of  reason  in  constituting  the  moral  judgment 
(*  I  ought '),  as  weU  as  the  moral  motive  (*  I  must,  because  I 
ought'),  could  not  find  due  recognition  in  an  age  which 
took  its  notion  of  reason  from  Locke.  The  only  theory  then 
known  which  found  the  source  of  moral  distinctions  in 
reason  was  Clarke's,  and  Clarke's  notion  of  reason  was 
essentially  the  same  as  that  which  appears  in  Locke's 
account  of   demonstrative    knowledge.*    It   was  in  truth 

■  See  a  paseage  towards  the  end  of  n.,  proposition  1.  The  germ  of  CIarke*s 

Sermon  III.,  *  Heasonable  self-love  and  doctrine  of  morals  is  to  be  fonnd  in 

conscience  are  the  chief/ &c.  &c.;  also  Locke's      occasional     assimilation    of 

a  passsffe  towards  the  end  of  Sermon  moral  to  mathematical  trath  imd  cer- 

XL,  <  Let  it  be  allowed  though  virtae/  tainty.  (Cf.  Essay,  Book  it,  ch.  4,  sec  7, 

&c  ftc.  and  ch.  12,  «ec.  8. 

*  See  Clarke's  Boyle  Lectures,  Vol. 


SHAFTESBURY'S  'RATIONAL  AFFECTION/  829 

derived  from  the  procedure  of  mathematics,  and  only  applic-  reason  iu- 
able  to  the  comparison  of  quantities.  Clarke  talks  loftilj  ^ftru^^'' 
about  the  Eternal  Season  of  things,  but  by  this  he  means  view, 
nothing  definite  except  the  laws  of  proportion,  and  when  he 
finds  the  virtue  of  an  act  to  consist  in  conformity  to  this 
Eternal  Season,  the  inevitable  rejoinder  is  the  question — 
Between  what  quantities  is  this  virtue  a  proportion  P  *  In 
Shaftesbury  first  appears  a  doctrine  of  moral  sense.  Over 
and  above  the  social  and  self-regarding  affections  proper  to 
a  ^  sensible '  creature,  the  characteristic  of  man  is  a  ^  rational 
affection '  for  goodness  as  consisting  in  the  proper  adjust- 
ment of  the  two  orders  of  *  sensible '  affection.  This  rational 
affection  is  not  only  a  possible  motive  to  action — ^it  is  the 
only  motive  that  can  make  that  character  good  of  which 
human  action  is  the  expression ;  for  with  Shaftesbury,  though 
a  balance  of  the  social  and  self-affections  constitutes  the 
goodness  of  those  affections,  yet  the  man  is  only  good  as 
actuated  by  affection  for  this  goodness,  and  'should  the 
sensible  affections  stand  ever  so  much  amiss,  yet  if  they 
prevail  not  because  of  those  other  rational  affections  spoken 
of,  the  person  is  esteemed  virtuous.*  ■  Such  a  notion,  it  is 
clear,  if  it  had  met  with  a  psychology  answering  it,  had  only 
to  be  worked  out  in  order  to  become  Kant's  doctrine  of  the 
rational  will  as  determined  by  reverence  for  law;  but 
Shaftesbury  had  no  such  psychology,  nor,  with  his  aristo- 
cratic indifference  to  completeness  of  system,  does  he  seem 
ever  to  have  felt  the  want  of  it.  He  never  asked  himself 
what  precisely  was  the  theory  of  reason  implied  in  the 
admission  of  an  affection  '  rational '  in  the  sense,  not  that 
reason  calculates  the  means  to  its  satisfaction,  but  that  it  is 
determined  by  an  object  only  possible  for  a  rational  as 
distinct  from  a  '  sensible '  creature ;  and  just  because  he  did 
not  do  so,  he  slipped  into  adaptations  to  the  current  view  of 
the  good  as  pleasure  and  of  desire  as  determined  by  the 
pleasure  incidental  to  its  own  satisfaction.  Thus,  to  a 
disciple,  who  wished  to  extract  from  Shaftesbury  a  more 
definite  system  than  Shaftesbury  had  himself  formed,  the  shaftee- 
*  rational  affection '  would  become  desire  for  a  specific  feeling  ^^^  doo^ 
of  pleasure  supposed  to  arise  on  the  view  of  good  actions  as  rational 
exhibiting  a  proper  balance  between  social  and  self-regarding  affection ; 

»  Cf.  Hume,  Vol.  ii.,  p.  238. 

'  *lDq.  concerning  Virtue/  Book  i.,  pt.  2,  sec.  4.     Cf.  Sec.  3  sub  iniU 


890  INTRODUCTION  U. 

qwilt  bj      affections.     Tbis  pleasure  is  the  '  moral  sense/  ^  with  which 

» mozal^  ^    Shafbesbnr}  's  name  has  become  specially  associated,  while 

the  doctrine  of  rational  affection,  with  which  he  certainly 

himself  connected  it,  but  which  it  essentially  vitiates,  has 

been  forgotten. 

27.  That  doctrine  is  of  value  as  maintaining  that  those 
actions  only  are  morally  good  of  which  the  rational  affection 
is  the  motive,  in  the  sense  that  they  spring  from  a  character 
which  this  affection  has  fashioned.  But  if  the  rational  affec- 
tion is  desire  for  the  pleasure  of  moral  sense,  we  find  ourselves 
in  the  contradiction  of  supposing  that  the  only  motive  which 
can  produce  good  acts  is  one  that  cannot  operate  till  after 
the  good  acts  have  been  done.  It  is  desire  for  a  pleasure 
which  yet  can  only  have  been  experienced  as  a  consequence 
of  the  previous  existence  of  the  desire.  Shaftesbury  himself, 
indeed,  treats  the  moral  sense  of  pleasure  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  good  actions  as  a  pleasure  in  the  view  of  the  right 
adjustment  between  the  social  and  self-affections.  If,  how- 
ever, on  the  strength  of  this,  we  suppose  that  certain  actions 
are  first  done,  not  &om  the  rational  affection,  but  yet  good, 
and  that  then  remembrance  of  the  pleasure  found  in  the  view 
of  their  goodness,  exciting  desire,  becomes  motive  to  another 
set  of  acts  which  are  thus  done  from  rational  affection,  we 
contradict  his  statement  that  only  the  rational  affection  forms 
the  goodness  of  man,  and  are  none  the  nearer  to  an  account 
of  what  does  form  it.  To  say  that  it  is  the  ^  right  adjustment ' 
of  the  two  orders  of  affection  tells  us  nothing.  Except  as  sug- 
gesting an  analogy  from  the  world  of  art,  really  inapplicable, 
but  by  which  Shaftesbury  was  much  influenced,  this  expres- 
sion means  no  more  than  that  goodness  is  a  good  state  of 
the  affections.  From  such  a  circle  the  outlet  most  consistent 
Conse-  with  the  spirit  of  that  philosophy,  which  had  led  Shaftesbury 
th? Utter  liiniself  to  bring  down  the  rational  affection  to  the  level  of  a 
desire  for  pleasure,  would,  lie  in  the  notion  that  a  state  of 
the  affections  is  good  in  proportion  as  it  is  productive  of 
pleasure ;  which  again  would  suggest  the  question  whether 
the  specific  pleasure  of  moral  sense  itself,  the  supposed  object 
of  rational  affection,  is  more  than  pleasure  in  that  indefinite 

*  In  using  the  term  '  moral  sense,'  sense  of  the  word,  as  opposed  to  reason, 

Shaftesbuzy  himself,  no  doubt,  meant  the  fiurulty  of  demonstration,    rather 

00  convey  the  notion  that  the  moral  than  that  it  was  a  susceptibility  of 

faculty  was  one  of '  intuition,'  in  Locke's  pleasure  and  pain. 


MOBAL  SENSE.  831 

anticipation  of  pleasure  which  the  view  of  a£Fection8  so 
ordered  tends  to  raise  in  ns. 

28.  Here,  again,  neither  Butler  nor  Hutcheson,  while  they  is  an  act 
avoid  the  most  obvious  inconsistency  of  Shaftesbury's  doctrine,  f^j.^^^.^ 
do  much  for  its  positiye development.   With  each  the  ^ moral  Bake'  done 
faculty,'  though  it  is  said  to  approve  and  disapprove,  is  still  '<>'  P^?-" 
a  *  sense '  or  ^  sentiment,'  a  specific  susceptibility  of  pleasure  moral 

in  the  contemplation  of  goodness ;  and  each  again  recognises  s^n^e? 
a  *  reflex  affection  *  for — a  desire  to  have — ^the  goodness  of 
which  the  view  conveys  this  pleasure.  But  they  neither  have 
the  merit  of  stating  so  explicitly  as  Shaftesbury  does  that  this 
rational  affection  alone  constitutes  the  goodness  of  man,  as 
man ;  nor,  on  the  other  hand,  do  they  lapse,  as  he  does,  into 
the  representation  of  it  as  a  desire  for  the  pleasure  which  the 
view  of  goodness  causes.  Butler,  indeed,  having  no  account 
to  give  of  the  goodness  which  is  approved  or  morally  pleasing, 
but  the  fact  that  it  is  so  pleasing,  could  logically  have  no- 
thingto  say  against  the  view  that  this  reflex  affection  is  merely 
a  desire  for  this  particular  sort  of  pleasure;  but  by  representing 
it  as  equivalent  in  its  highest  form  to  the  love  of  God,  to  the 
longing  of  the  soul  after  Him  as  the  perfectly  good,  he  in 
effect  gives  it  a  wholly  different  character.  Hutcheson,  by 
his  deflnition  of  the  object  of  moral  approbation,*  which  is 
also  a  definition  of  the  object  of  the  reflex  affection,  is  fairly 
entitled  to  exclude,  as  he  does,  along  with  the  notion  that 
the  goodness  which  we  morally  approve  is  the  quality  of  ex- 
citing the  pleasure  of  such  approval,  the  notion  that  *  affec- 
tion for  goodness '  means  desire  for  this  or  any  other  pleasure. 
But,  in  spite  of  his  express  rejection  of  this  view,  the  question 
will  stDl  return,  how  either  a  faculty  of  consciousness  of 
which  we  only  know  that  it  is  'a  kind  of  taste  or  relifh,'  or 
a  desire  from  the  determination  of  which  reason  is  expressly 
excluded,  can  have  any  other  object  than  pleasure  or  pain. 

29.  In  contrast  with  these  well-meant  efforts  to  derive  Hume 
that  distinction  between  the  selfish  and  unselfish,  betweeu  ^veiy  ** 
the  pleasant  and  the  morally  good,  which  the  Christian  con-  object  of 
science  requires,  from  principles  that  do  not  admit  of  it,  ^^^* 
Hume's  system  has  the  merit  of  relative  consistency.     He 

sees  that  the  two  sides  of  Locke's  doctrine — one  that  tiiought 
originates  nothing,  but  takes  its  objects  as  given  in  feeling, 
the  other  that  the  good  which  is  object  of  desire  is  pleasant 

'  See  aboTC,  sec.  25. 


332  INTRODUCTION  H. 

feeling — are  inseparable.  Hence  he  decisively  rejects  every 
notion  of  rational  or  unselfish  a£Fections,  which  would  imply 
that  they  are  other  than  desires  for  pleasure;  of  virtue, 
which  would  imply  that  it  antecedently  determines,  rather 
than  is  constituted  by,  the  specific  pleasure  of  moral  sense ; 
and  of  this  pleasure  itself,  which  would  imply  that  anything 
but  the  view  of  tendencies  to  produce  pleasure  can  excite  it. 
But  here  his  consistency  stops.  The  principle  which  forbade 
him  to  admit  any  object  of  desire  but  pleasure  is  practically 
forgotten  in  his  account  of  the  sources  of  pleasure,  and  its 
being  so  forgotten  is  the  condition  of  the  desire  for  pleasure 
being  made  plausibly  to  serve  as  a  foundation  for  morals. 
It  is  the  assumption  of  pleasures  determined  by  objects  only 
possible  for  reason,  made  in  the  treatise  on  the  Passions, 
that  prepares  the  way  for  the  rejection  of  reason,  as  supply- 
ing either  moral  motive  or  moral  standard,  in  the  treatise 
on  Morals. 
Hm  30.  '  The  passions  *  is  Hume's  generic  term  for  <  impres- 

^©rt*^'  sions  of  refiection* — appetites,  desires,  and  emotions  alike. 
paBsionB.'  He  divides  them  into  two  main  orders,  ^  direct  and  indirect,' 
both  ^  founded  on  pain  and  pleasure.'  The  direct  passions 
are  enumerated  as  ^  desire  and  aversion,  grief  and  joy,  hope 
and  fear,  along  with  volition '  or  will.  These  ^  arise  from 
good  and  evil '  (which  are  the  same  as  pleasure  and  pain) 
*  most  naturally  and  with  least  preparation.'  *  Desire  arises 
from  good,  aversion  from  evil,  considered  simply.'  They 
become  will  or  volition,  *  when  the  good  may  be  attained  or 
evil  avoided  by  any  action  of  the  mind  or  body ' — will  being 
simply  ^  the  internal  impression  we  feel  and  are  conscious  of, 
when  we  knowingly  give  rise  to  any  new  motion  of  our  body 
or  new  perception  of  our  mind.'  *  When  good  is  certain  or  pro- 
bable it  produces  joy'  (which  is  described  also  as  a  pleasure  pro- 
duced by  pleasure  or  by  the  imagination  of  pleasure) ;  ^  when  it 
is  uncertain,  it  gives  rise  to  hope.'  To  these  the  corresponding 
opposites  are  grief  and  fear.  We  must  suppose  them  to  be 
distinguished  from  desire  and  aversion  as  being  what  he 
elsewhere  calls  ^  pure  emotions ' ;  such  as  do  not,  like  desires, 
^  immediately  excite  us  to  action.'  Given  such  an  immediate 
impression  of  pleasure  or  pain  as  excites  a  ^  distinct  passion ' 
of  one  or  other  of  these  kinds,  and  supposing  it  to  ^  arise 
from  an  object  related  to  ourselves  or  others,'  it  excites 
mediately,  through  this  relation,  the  new  impressions  of  pride 


V 


HUME  ON  THE  OBJECT  OF  DESIRE.  833 

or  humility,  love  or  hatred — pride  when  the  object  is  related  All  desire 
to  oneself,  love  when  it  is  related  to  another  person.  These  "i^Joj^ 
are  mdirect  passions.  They  do  not  tend  to  displace  the  imme- 
diate impression  which  is  the  condition  of  their  excitement, 
but  being  themselves  agreeable  give  it  additional  force. 
*  Thus  a  suit  of  fine  clothes  produces  pleasure  from  their 
beauty ;  and  this  pleasure  produces  the  direct  passions,  or 
the  impressions  of  volition  and  desire.  Again,  when  these 
clothes  are  considered  as  belonging  to  oneself,  the  double 
relation  conveys  to  us  the  sentiment  of  pride,  which  is  an 
indirect  passion;  and  the  pleasure  which  attends  that 
passion  returns  back  to  the  direct  a£Fections,  and  gives  new 
force  to  our  desire  or  volition,  joy  or  hope.' ' 

81.  Alongside  of  the  unqualified  statement  that  *  the  pas-  Yet  he  ad* 
sions,  both  direct  and  indirect,  are  founded  on  pain  and  ™on8'^*^ 
pleasure,'  and  the  consequent  theory  of  them,  we  find  the  which  pro- 
curiously  cool  admission  that  *  beside  pain  and  pleasure,  the  p]^,„^^ 
direct  passions  frequently  arise  from  a  natural  impulse  or  in-  butp«>-* 
stinct,  which  is  perfectly  unaccountable.     Of  this  kind  is  the  ^IJ^^J^ 
desire  of  punishment  to  our  enemies,  and  of  happiness  to  our 
friends ;  hunger  and  lust,  and  a  few  other  bodily  appetites. 
These  passions,  properly  speaking,  produce  good  and  evil, 
and  proceed  not  from  them  like  the  other  affections.'*    In 
this  casual  way  appears  the  recognition  of  that  difference  of 
the  desire  for  imagined  pleasure  from  appetite  proper  on  the 
one  side,  and  on  the  other  from  desire  determined  by  reason.'-'  '  ""*  , 
which  it  is  the  point  of  Hume's  system  to  ignore.   The  ques- 
tion is,  how  many  of  the  pleasures  in  which  he  finds  the 
springs  of  human  conduct  are  other  than  products  of  a  desire 
which  is  not  itself  moved  by  pleasure,  or  emotions  excited 
by  objects  which  reasogLgP^stitutes.    > 

■  Vol.  IT.,  pp.  214,  216.    Cf.  pp.  76,  adTenary,  by  gratifying    revenge,    » 

90,  153  and  203.  good :  the  sicknesB  of  a  companion,  hy 

'  P. 216.    The  passage  in  the  'Die-  affecting  fiiendehip,  is  evil.'    Here  he 

sertation  on  the  Passions*   (Vol.    it.,  avoids  the  inconsistency  of  admitting  in 

'  Dissertation    on    the    Passions,'  sub  so  many  words  a  '  desire '  which  is  not 

init.),  which  corresponds  to  the  one  here  for  a  pleasure.    But  the  inconsistency 

quoted,  throws  light  on  the  relation  in  really  remains.    What  is  the  passion, 

which  Hume's    later  redaction  of   his  the  *  conformability '  to  which  of   an 

theory  stands  to  the  earlier,  as  occasion-  object  in  the  supposed  cases  constitutes 

ally  disguising,  but  never  removing,  its  pleasure  ?    Since  it  is  neither  an  appe- 

inconsistencies.      '  Some    objects,    by  tite  (such  as  hunger),  nor  an  emotion 

being  naturally  conformable  or  contrary  (such  as  pride),  it  remains  that  it  is  a 

to  passion,  excite  an  agreeable  or  pain-  desire,  and  a  desire  which,  though  the 

fol  sensation,   and  are  thence  called  'gratification' of  it  is  a  pleasure,  cannot 

good  or  evil.    The  punishment  of  an  be  a  desire  for  that  or  any  other  pleasure. 


884  INTRODUCTION  IL 

DiNiM  for       82.  In  what  seime,  we  have  first  to  ask,  do  Hume's  princi- 
^^J^  pies  justify  him  in  speaking  of  desire  far  an  object  at  all. 
ftands  it,     '  The  appearance  of  an  object  to  the  senses '  is  the  same 
^^^     thing  as  ^  an  impression  becoming  present  to  the  mind/^  and 
theory  of    if  this  is  tme  of  impressions  of  sense  it  cannot  be  less  trne 
impp©i-       Qf  impressions  of  reflection.    If  sense  'offers  not  its  object 
*detm.         as  anything  distinct  from  itself/  neither  can  desire.     Its 
object,  according  to  Hume,  is  an  idea  of  a  past  impression ; 
but  this,  if  we  take  him  at  his  word,  can  merely  mean  that 
a  feeling    which,  when  at  its  liveliest,  was  pleasant,  has 
passed  into  a  fainter  stage,  which,  in  contract  with  the 
livelier,  is  pain — the  pain  of  want,  which  is  also  a  wish  for 
the  renewal  of  the  original  pleasure.   In  fact,  however,  when 
Hume  or  anyone  else  (whether  he  admit  the  possibility  of 
desiring  an  object  not  previously  found  pleasant,  or  no), 
speaks  of  desire  for  an  object,  he  means  something  different 
from  this.    He  means  either  desire  for  an  object  that  causes 
pleasure,  which  is  impossible  except  so  £eu-  as  the  original 
pleasure  has  been-HK>n8ciously  to  the  subject  feeling  it — 
pleasure  caused  by  an  object,  i.e.,  a  feeling  determined  by 
the  conception  of  a  thing  under  relations  to  self;  or  else 
desire  for  pleasure  as  an  object,  {.6.,  not  merely  desire  for 
the  revival  of  some  feeling  which,  having  been  pleasant  as 
*  impression,'  survives  without  being  pleasant  as  *  idea^'  but 
desire  determined  by  the  consciousness  of  self  as  a  perma- 
^1  nent  subject  that  has  been  pleased,  and  is  to  be  pleased  again* 
'  It  is  here,  then,  as  in  the  case  of  the  attempted  derivation 
of  space,  or  of  identity  and  substance,  from  impressions  of 
sense.     In  order  to  give  rise  to  such  an  impression  of  reflec- 
tion as  desire  for  an  object  is,  either  the  original  impression 
of  sense,  or  the  idea  of  this,  must  be  other  than  Hume  could 
allow  it  to  be.     Either  the  original  impression  must  be  other 
than  a  satisfaction  of  appetite,  other  than  a  sight,  smell, 
sound,  &c.,  or  the  idea  must  be  other  than  a  copy  of  the  im- 
pression.    One  or  other  must  be  determined  by  conceptions 
not  derived  from  feeling,  the  correlative  conceptions  of  self 
and  thing.     Thus,   in  order  to  be   able  to  interpret   his 
primary  class  of  impressions  of  reflection*  as  desires  for 
objects,  or  for  pleasures  as  good,  Hume  has  already  made 
the  assumption  that  is  needed  for  the  transition  to  that 

>  8m  GenenllntroductioD,  paragraph  208.  '  See  above,  Me.  10. 


^ 


INDIBECT  FASSIONa  335 

secondary  class  of  impressions  through  which  he  has  to 
account  for  morality.  He  has  assumed  that  thought  deter- 
mines feelings  and  not  merely  reproduces  it.  Even  if  the 
materials  out  of  which  it  constructs  the  determining  object 
be  merely  remembered  pleasures,  the  object  is  no  more  to  be 
identified  with  these  materials  than  the  living  body  with  its 
chemical  constituents. 

33.  In  the  account  of  the  *  indirect  passions'  the  term  prided^- 
object  is  no  longer  applied,  as  in  the  account  of  the  direct  tonnmed 
ones,  to  the  pleasure  or  pain  which  excites  desire  or  aver-  ence  to 
sion.     It  is  expressly  transferred  to  the  self  or  other  person,  ^^' 
to  whom  the  ^  exciting  causes '  of  pride  and  love  must  be 
severally   related.      *  Pride  and  humility,  though  directly 
contrary,  have  yet  the  same  object,'  viz.,  self;  but  smce  they 
are  contrary,  *  'tis  impossible  this  object  can  be  their  cause, 

or  sufficient  alone  to  excite  them We  must  therefore 

make  a  distinction  betwixt  that  idea  which  excites  them,  and 
that  to  which  they  direct  their  view  when  excited.  .... 
The  first  idea  that  is  presented  to  the  mind  is  that  of  the 
cause  or  productive  principle.  This  excites  the  passion  con- 
nected with  it ;  and  that  passion,  when  excited,  turns  our 
view  to  another  idea,  which  is  that  of  self.  ....  The  first 
idea  represents  the  caiis6f  the  second  the  object  of  the 
passion.'^  Again  a  further  distinction  must  be  made  ^  in  the 
causes  of  the  passion  betwixt  that  quality  which  operates, 
and  the  subject  on  which  it  is  placed.  A  man,  for  instance, 
is  vain  of  a  beautiful  house  which  belongs  to  him,  or  which 
be  has  himself  built  or  contrived.  Here  the  object  of  the 
passion  is  himself,  and  the  cause  is  the  beautiful  house; 
which  cause  again  is  subdivided  into  two  parts,  viz.,  the 
quality  which  operates  upon  the  passion,  and  the  subject  in 
which  the  quality  inheres.  The  quality  is  the  beauty,  and 
the  subject  is  the  house,  considered  as  his  property  or  con- 
trivance.'* It  is  next  found  that  the  operative  qualities 
which  produce  pride,  however  various,  agree  in  this,  that 
they  produce  pleasure — a  *  separate  pleasure,'  independent 
of  the  resulting  pride.  In  all  cases,  again,  ^  the  subjects  to 
which  these  qualities  adhere  are  either  parts  of  ourselves  or 
something  nearly  related  to  us.'  The  conclusion  is  that 
^the  cause,  which  excites  the  passion,  is  related  to  the 

*  Vol.  II.,  pp.  77  and  78.  «  Ibid.,  p.  79, 


336  IKTRODUCnOX  IL 

olgect  which  nature  naa  attributed  to  the  passion;  the 
sensation,  which  the  canse  separately  prodnoes,  is  related  to 
the  sensation  of  the  passion :  from  this  double  relation  of 
ideas  and  impressions  the  passion  is  derired.'*  The  ideas, 
it  will  be  obserred,  are  serCTsIly  those  of  the  exciting 
'subject'  (in  the  illustratiTe  case  quoted,  the  beautiful 
house)  and  of  the  '  object '  self;  the  impressions  are  sererally 
the  pleasure  immediately  caused  by  the  '  subject '  (in  the 
case  giyeuj  the  pleasure  of  feeling  beauty)  and  tiie  pleasure 
of  pride.  The  relation  between  the  ideas  may  be  any  of  the 
'natural  ones '  that  regulate  association.'  In  the  supposed 
case  it  is  that  of  cause  and  effect,  since  a  man's  property 
'  produces  effects  on  him  and  he  on  it.'  The  rehition  between 
the  impressions  must  be  that  of  resemblance — this,  as  we  are 
told  by  the  way  (somewhat  strangely,  if  impressions  are 
only  stix>nger  ideas),  being  the  only  possible  rehition  between 
impressions — ^the  resemblance  of  one  pleasure  to  another, 
riiis  34.  Pride,  then,  is  a  special  sort  of  pleasure  excited  by 

^^^^^^  another  special  sort  of  pleasure,  and  the  distinction  of  the 
two  sorts  of   pleasure  from  each  other  depends  on   the 


, . '  ^    character  which  each  deriyes  from  an  idea — one  from  the 

-wbatam 


*iapn«- 


idea  of  self,  the  other  from  the  idea  of  some  '  quality  in  a 
P?"^*«  subject,'  which  may  be  the  beauty  of  a  pictcue,  or  thft 
achieTcment  of  an  ancestor,  or  any  other  quality  as  unlike 
these  as  these  are  unlike  each  other,  so  long  as  the  idea  of  it 
is  capable  of  association  with  the  idea  of  self.  Apart  from 
such  determination  by  ideas,  the  pleasure  of  pride  itself  and 
the  pleasure  which  excites  it,  on  the  separateness  of  which 
from  each  other  Hume  insists,  could  only  be  separate  in 
time  and  degree  of  Ureliness — a  separation  which  might 
equally  obtain  between  successive  feelings  of  pride.  Of 
neither  could  anything  be  said  but  that  it  was  pleasant- 
more  or  less  pleasant  than  the  other,  brfore  or  after  it,  as 
the  case  might  be.  Is  the  idea,  then,  that  giyes  each  im- 
pression its  character,  itself  an  impression  grown  £unter? 
It  should  be  so,  of  course,  if  Hume's  theory  of  consciousness 
is  to  hold  good,  either  in  its  general  form,  or  in  its  applica- 
tion to  morals,  according  to  which  all  actions,  those  moved 
by  pride  among  the  rest,  hare  pleasure  for  their  ultimate 
motive ;  and  no  doubt  he  would  have  said  that  it  was  so. 

>  YqL  n^  pp.  84,  85.  *  Book  i.,  part  1,  mo.  4  and  &. 


PIUDE  AND  IDEA  OF  SELF.  837 

The  idea  of  the  beautj  of  a  picture,  for  instance,  is  the 
original  impression  which  it  *  makes  on  the  senses  '  as  more 
faintly  retained  by  the  mind.  But  is  the  original  impression 
merely  an  impression — an  impression  undetermined  by  con- 
ceptions, and  of  which,  therefore,  as  it  is  to  the  subject  of 
it,  nothing  can  be  said,  but  simply  that  it  is  pleasant?  This, 
too,  in  the  particular  instance  of  beauty,  Hume  seems  to 
hold ;  *  but  if  it  is  so,  the  idea  of  beauty,  as  determined  by 
reference  to  the  impression,  is  determined  by  reference  to 
the  indeterminate,  and  we  know  no  more  of  the  separate 
pleasure  that  excites  the  pleasure  of  pride,  when  we  are  told 
that  its  source  is  an  impression  of  beauty,  than  we  did  before. 
Apart  from  eixkj  other  reference,  we  only  know  that  pride  is 
a  pleasure  excited  by  a  pleasure  which  is  itself  excited  by  a 
pleasure  grown  fainter.  Of  effect,  proximate  cause,  and 
ultimate  cause,  only  one  and  the  same  thing  can  be  said, 
viz.,  that  each  feels  pleasant.  Meanwhile  in  regard  to  that 
other  relation  from  which  the  pleasure  of  pride,  on  its  part, 
is  supposed  to  take  its  character,  the  same  question  arises. 
This  pleasure  ^  has  self  for  its  object.'  Is  self,  then,  an  im- 
pression stronger  or  fainter?  Can  one  feeling  be  said 
without  nonsense  to  have  another  feeling  for  its  object?  If 
it  can,  what  specification  is  gained  for  a  pleasure  or  pain  by 
reference  to  an  object  of  which,  as  a  mere  feeling,  nothing 
more  can  be  said  than  that  it  is  a  pleasure  or  pain  ?  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  idea  of  self,  relation  to  which  makes  the 
feeling  of  pride  what  it  is,  and  through  it  determines  action, 
is  not  a  copy  of  any  impression  of  sense  or  reflection — not  a 
copy  of  any  sight  or  sound,  any  passion  or  emotion^ — how 
can  it  be  true  that  the  ultimate  determination  of  action  in 
all  cases  arises  frt)m  pleasure  or  pain  ? 

35.  From  the  pressure  of  such  questions  as  these  Hume  Bume's 
offers  us  two  main  subterfuges.     One  is  furnished  by  his  JJ^^^™^^,!^ 
account  of  the  self,  as  ^  that  succession  of  related  ideas  and  idea  of 
impressions  of  which  we  have  an  intimate  memory  and  con-  "f^^"  ^e- 
sciousness'* — an  account  which,  to  an  mcunous  reader,  impree- 
conveys  the  notion  that  *  self,*  if  not  exactly  an  impression, 
is  something  in  the  nature  of  an  impression,  while  yet  it 
seems  to  giye  the  required  determination  to  the  impression 
which  has  this  for  its  *  object.*    It  is  evident,  however,  that 

*  Vol  n.,  p.  96 ;  iy.,  *  Digsertation  on  *  Intr.  to  Vol.  i.,  paragraph  208. 

the  PassioDB/  ii.  7.  ■  Vol.  ii.,  p.  77,  &c. 

VOL  I.  ^ 


838  INTRODUCTION  11. 

its  plausibility  depends  entirely  on  the  qtialification  of  the 

*  succession,  Ac.,*  as  that  of  which  we  have  an  *  intimate  con- 
sciousness.' The  succession  of  impressions,  simply  as  such, 
and  in  the  absence  of  relation  to  a  single  subject,  is  nothing 
intelligible  at  all.  Hume,  indeed,  elsewhere  represents  it  as 
constituting  time,  which,  as  we  have  previously  shown,*  by 
itself  it  could  not  properly  be  said  to  do ;  but  if  it  could, 
the  characterisation  of  pleasure  as  having  time  for  its  object 
would  not  be  much  to  the  purpose.  The  successive  impres- 
sions and  ideas  are  further  said  to  be  *  related,'  i.6., 
naturally  related,  according  to  Hume's  sense  of  the  term ; 
but  this  we  have  found  means  no  more  than  that  when  two 
feelings  have  been  often  felt  to  be  either  like  each  other  or 

*  contiguous,'  the  recurrence  of  one  is  apt  to  be  followed  by 
the  recurrence  in  fainter  form  of  the  other.  This  charac- 
teristic of  the  succession  brings  it  no  nearer  to  the  intelli- 
gible unity  which  it  must  have,  in  order  to  be  an  object  of 
which  the  idea  makes  the  pleasure  of  pride  what  it  is.  The 
notion  of  its  having  such  unity  is  really  conveyed  by  the 
statement  that  we  have  an  ^  intimate  consciousness '  of  it. 
It  is  through  these  words,  so  to  speak,  that  we  read  into  the 
definition  of  self  that  conception  of  it  which  we  carry  with 
us,  but  of  which  it  states  the  reverse.  Now,  however 
difficult  it  may  be  to  say  what  this  intimate  consciousness  is, 
it  is  clear  that  it  cannot  be  one  of  the  feelings,  stronger  or 
fainter — impressions  or  ideas — which  the  first  part  of  the 
definition  tells  us  form  a  succession,  for  this  would  imply 
that  one  of  them  was  at  the  same  time  all  the  rest.  Nor 
yet  can  it  be  a  compound  of  them  all,  for  the  fact  that  they 
are  a  succession  is  incompatible  with  their  forming  a  com- 
pound. Here,  then,  is  a  consciousness,  which  is  not  an 
impression,  and  which  we  can  only  take  to  be  derived  from 
impressions  by  supposing  these  to  be  what  they  first  become 
in  relation  to  this  consciousness.  In  saying  that  we  have 
such  a  consciousness  of  the  succession  of  impressions,  we 
say  in  effect  that  we  are  other  than  the  succession.  How, 
then,  without  contradiction,  can  our  self  be  said  to  he  the 
succession  of  impressions,  &c. — a  succession  which  in  the  very 
next  word  has  to  be  qualified  in  a  way  that  implies  we  are 
other  than  it  ?     This  question,  once  put,  will  save  us  from 

>  Intr.  to  Vol.  I.,  see.  261. 


HUME'S  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  SELF.  889 

Bnrprise  at  finding  that  in  one  place,  among  frequent  repeti- 
tions of  the  acconnt  of  self  abeady  given,  the  *  succession 
&c.'  is  dropped,  and  for  it  substituted  *  the  individual  person 
of  whose  actions  and  sentiments  each  of  us  is  intimately 


conscious. 


9  I 


86.  The  other  way  of  gaining  an  apparent  determination  Another 
for  the  impression,  pride,  without  making  it  depend  on  rela-  g^^^ V* 
tion  to  that  which  is  not  an  impression  at  all,  corresponds  physioio- 
to  that  appeal  to  the  *  anatomist '  by  the  suggestion  of  ^^^^f 
which,  it  will  be  remembered,  Hume  avoids  the  troublesome  pride. 
question,  how  the  simple  impressions  of  sense,  undetermined 
by  relation,  can  have  that  definite  character  which  they  must 
have  if  they  are  to  serve  as  the  elements  of  knowledge.  The 
question  in  that  case  being  really  one  that  concerns  the 
simple  impression,  as  it  is  for  tiie  consciousness  of  the 
subject  of  it,  Hume's  answer  is  pi  effect  a  reference  to 
what  it  is  for  the  physiologist.  So  in  regard  to  pride ;  the 
question  being  what  character  it  can  have,  for  the  conscious 
subject  of  it,  to  distinguish  it  from  any  other  pleasant  feel- 
ing, except  such  as  is  derived  from  a  conception  which  is 
not  an  impression,  Hume  is  ready  on  occasion  to  suggest 
that  it  has  the  distinctive  character  which  for  the  physio- 
logist it  would  derive  fix>m  the  nerves  organic  to  it,  if  such 
nerves  could  be  traced.  '  We  must  suppose  that  nature  has 
given  to  the  organs  of  the  human  mind  a  certain  disposition 
fitted  to  produce  a  peculiar  impression  or  emotion,  which  we 
call  PBIDE :  to  this  emotion  she  has  assigned  a  certain  idea, 
viz.,  that  of  SELF,  which  it  never  fails  to  produce.  This 
contrivance  of  nature  is  easily  conceived.  We  have  many 
instances  of  such  a  situation  of  affairs.  The  nerves  of  the 
nose  and  palate  are  so  disposed,  as  in  certain  circumstances 
to  convey  such  pecuUar  sensations  to  the  mind ;  the  sensations 
of  lust  and  hunger  always  produce  in  us  the  idea  of  those 
peculiar  objects,  which  are  suitable  to  each  appetite.  These 
two  circumstances  are  united  in  pride.  The  organs  are  so 
disposed  as  to  produce  the  passion ;  and  the  passion,  after 
its  production,  naturally  produces  a  certain  idea.'^ 

87.  Here,  it  will  be  noticed,  the  doctrine,  that  the  pleasant  Fallacy  of 
emotion  of  pride  derives  its  specific  character  from  relation  ^"' 
to  the  idea  of  self,  is  dropped.     The  emotion  we  call  pride  is 

»  Vol.  n.,  p.  84.  «  Vol.  n.,  p.  86. 

Z2 


340  INTRODUCTION  ir. 

It  does  not  supposed  to  be   first  produced,  and  then,  in  virtue  of  its 
whit^pride  ''P®^^^^  charaoter  as  pride,  to  produce  the  idea  of  self.*     If 
if  to  the      the  idea  of  self,  then,  does  not  give  the  pleasure  its  specific 
■ubjectof    character,  what  does  P     ^That  disposition  fitted  to  produce 
it,'  Hume  answers,  which  belongs  to  the  'organs  of  the 
human  mind.'   Now  either  this  is  the  old  story  of  explaining 
the  soporific  qualities  of  opium  by  its  vis  soporificay  or  it  means 
that  the  distinction  of  the  pleasure  of  pride  from  other 
pleasures,  like  the  distinction  of  a  smell  from  a  taste,  is 
due  to  a  particular  kind  of  nervous  irritation  that  conditions 
it,  and  may  presumably  be  ascertained  by  the  physiologist. 
Whether  such  a  physical  condition  of  pride  can  be  dis- 
covered or  no,  it  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  dispute.     The  point 
to  observe  is  that,  if  discovered,  it  would  not  afford  an 
answer  to  the  question  to  which  an  answer  is  being  sought 
— to  the  question,  naniely,  what  the  emotion  of  pride  is  to 
the  conscious  subject  of  it.     If  it  were  found  to  be  condi- 
tioned by  as  specific  a  nervous  irritation  as  the  sensations  of 
smell  and  taste  to  which  Hume  assimilates  it,  it  would  yet 
be  no  more  the  consciousness  of  such  irritation  than  is  the 
smell  of  a  rose  to  the  person  smelling  it.    In  the  one  case 
as  in  the  other,  the  feeling,  as  it  is  to  the  subject  of  it,  can 
only  be  determined  by  relation  to  other  feelings  or  other 
modes  of  consciousness.     It  is  by  such  a  relation  that,  ac- 
cording to  Hume's  general  account  of  it,  pride  is  determined, 
but  the  relation  is  to  the  consciousness  of  an  object  which, 
not  being  any  form  of  feeling,  has  no  proper  place  in  his 
psychology.     Hence  in  the  passage  before  us  he  tries  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  a  physical  determination  of  the  emotion,  which 
for  the  subject  of  it  is  no  determination  at  all ;  and,  having 
gained  an  apparent  specification  for  it  in  this  way,  to  repre- 
sent as  its  product  that  idea  of  a  distinctive  object  which 
he  had  previously  treated  as  necessary  to  constitute  it.  Pride 
produces  the  idea  of  self,  just  as  '  the  sensations  of  hunger 
and  lust  always  produce  in  us  the  idea  of  those  peculiar 
objects,  which  are  suitable  to  each  appetite.'    Now  it  is  a 
large  assumption  in  regard  to  animals  other  than  men,  that, 
because  hunger  and  lust  move  them   to  eat  and  generate, 
they  so  move  them  through  the  intervention  of  any  ideas  of 
objects  whatever — an   assumption  which  in  the  absence  of 

•  Cf.  Vol.  IV.,  •  Dissertation  on  the  Passions,'  ii.  2. 


LOVE  IMPLIES  SYMPATHY.  841 

language  on  the  part  of  the  animals  it  is  impossible  to  yerify 
— ^and  one  still  more  questionable,  that  the  ideas  of  objects 
which  these  appetites  (if  it  be  so)  produce  in  the  animals, 
except  as  determined  by  self-consciousness,  are  ideas  in  the 
same  sense  as  the  idea  of  self.  But  at  any  rate,  if  such 
feelings  produce  ideas  of  peculiar  objects,  it  must  be  in 
virtue  of  the  distinctiye  character  which,  as  feelings,  they 
have  for  the  subjects  of  them.  The  withdrawal,  however, 
of  determination  by  the  idea  of  self  from  the  emotion  of 
pride,  leaves  it  with  no  distinctive  character  whatever,  and 
therefore  with  nothing  by  which  we  may  explain  its  produc- 
tion of  that  idea  as  analogous  to  the  production  by  hunger, 
if  we  admit  such  to  take  place,  of  the  *idea  of  the  peculiar 
object  suited  to  it.' 

88.  If,  in  Hume's  account  of  pride,  for  plea4nuref  wherever  Account  of 
it  occurs,  is  substituted  pain^  it  becomes  his  account  of  yoUJ^the 
humility.  A  criticism  of  one  account  is  equally  a  criticism  same  diffi- 
of  the  other;  and  with  him  every  passion  that  ^  has  self  for  ^^^^'» 
its  object,^  according  as  it  is  pleasant  or  painful,  is  included 
under  one  or  other  of  these  designations.  In  like  manner, 
every  passion  that  has  '  some  other  thinking  being'  for  its 
object,  according  as  it  is  pleasant  or  painful,  is  either  love 
or  hatred.  To  these  the  key  is  to  be  found  in  the  same 
*  double  relation  of  impressions  and  ideas '  by  which  pride 
and  humility  are  explained.  If  beautiful  pictures,  for 
instance,  belong  not  to  oneself  but  to  another  person,  they 
tend  to  excite  not  pride  but  esteem,  which  is  a  form  of  love. 
The  idea  of  them  is  ^  naturally  related '  to  the  idea  of  the 
person  to  whom  they  belong,  and  they  cause  a  separate 
pleasure  which  naturally  excites  the  resembling  impression 
of  which  this  other  person  is  the  object.  Write  *  other 
person,'  in  short,  where  before  was  vmtten  ^  self,'  and  the 
account  of  pride  and  humility  becomes  the  account  of  love 
and  hatred.  Of  this  pleasure  determined  by  the  idea  of 
another  person,  or  of  which  such  a  person  *  is  the  object,' 
Hume  gives  no  raHonale,  and,  failing  this,  it  must  be  taken 
to  imply  the  same  power  of  determining  feeling  on  the  part 
of  a  conception  not  derived  from  feeling,  which  we  have 
found  to  be  implied  in  the  pleasure  of  which  self  is  the 
object.  All  his  pains  and  ingenuity  in  the  second  part  of 
the  book  ^  on  the  Passions,'  are  spent  on  illustrating  the 
'  double  relation  of  impressions  and  ideas ' — on  characteris- 


342  LNTRODUCnOS   IL 

and  m  ing  the  separate  pleasures  which  excite  the  pleasure  of  love, 
^^^^'^  and  showing  how  the  idea  of  the  object  of  the  ezcitmg 
natare  ai  pleasore  is  related  to  the  idea  of  the  beloved  person.  The 
fjmfuihj.  objection  to  this  part  of  his  theory,  which  most  readily  sug- 
gests itself  to  a  reader,  arises  from  the  essential  discrepancy 
which  in  many  cases  seems  to  lie  between  the  exciting  and 
the  excited  pleasure.  The  drinking  of  fine  wine,  and  the 
feeling  of  love,  are  doubtless  ^resembling  impressions,'  so 
&r  as  each  is  pleasant,  and  from  the  idea  of  the  wine  the 
transition  is  natural  to  that  of  the  person  who  giyes  it ;  but 
is  there  really  anything,  it  will  be  asked,  in  my  enjojrment 
of  a  rich  man's  wine,  that  tends  to  make  me  love  him,  even 
in  the  wide  sense  of  'love'  which  Hume  admits?  This 
objection,  it  will  be  found,  is  so  far  anticipated  by  Hume, 
that  in  most  cases  he  treats  the  exciting  pleasure  as  taking 
its  character  firom  sympathy.  Thus  it  is  not  chiefly  the 
pleasure  of  ear,  sigh^  and  palate,  caused  by  the  rich  man's 
music,  and  gardens,  and  wine,  that  excites  our  lore  for  him, 
but  the  pleasure  we  experience  through  sympathy  with  his 
pleasure  in  them.'  The  explanation  of  love  being  thus 
thrown  back  on  sympathy  (which  had  previously  served  to 
explain  that  form  of  pride  which  is  called  '  love  of  fame  *),  we 
have  to  ask  whether  sympathy  is  any  less  dependent  than  we 
have  found  pride  to  be  on  an  originative,  as  distinct  from  a 
merely  reproductive,  reason. 
Home's  ae-  89.  *  When  any  afiPection  is  infused  by  sympathy,  it  is  at 
Tmu^  first  known  only  by  its  effects,  and  by  those  external  signs 
in  the  countenance  and  conversation  which  conyey  an  idea 
of  it.'  By  inference  firom  efTect  to  cause,  *  we  are  convinced 
of  the  reality  of  the  passion,'  conceiving  it  '  to  belong  to 
another  person,  as  we  conceive  any  other  matter  of  fact.' 
This  idea  of  another's  affection  *  is  presently  converted  into 
an  impression,  and  acquires  such  a  degree  of  force  and  viya- 
city  as  to  become  the  very  passion  itself,  and  produce  an 
equal  emotion  as  any  original  affection.'  The  conversion  is 
not  difficult  to  account  for  when  we  reflect  that  '  all  ideas 
are  borrowed  frx>m  impressions,  and  that  these  two  kinds  of 
perceptions  differ  only  in  the  degrees  of  force  and  vivacity 
with  which  they  strike  upon  the  soul.  ...  As  this  difference 
may  be  remoyed  in  some  measure  by  a  relation  between  the 

«  Vol.  II.,  p.  147 


HUME'S  THEORY  OF  SYMPATHY.  S48 

impressions  and  ideas ' — ^in  the  case  before  us,  the  relation 
behreen  the  impression  of  one's  own  person  and  the  idea 
of  another's,  by  which  the  vivacity  of  the  former  may  be 
conveyed  to  the  latter — *  'tis  no  wonder  an  idea  of  a  senti- 
ment or  passion  may  by  this  means  be  so  enlivened  as  to 
become  the  very  sentiment  or  passion.'* 

40.  Upon  this  it  must  be  remarked  that  the  inference  Itiinpiie«> 
from  the  external  signs  of  an  affection,  according  to  Hume's  J^J^^^°J 
doctrine  of  inference,  can  only  mean  that  certain  impressions  nob  ro- 
of the  other  person's  words  and  gestures  call  up  the  ideas  ^|^1^ 
of  their  *  usual  attendants ' ;  which,  again,  must  mean  either  dons. 
that  they  convey  the  belief  in  certain  exciting  circumstances 
experienced  by  the  other  man,  and  the  expectation  of  certain 
acts  to  follow  upon  his  words  and  gestures ;  or  else  that  they 
suggest  to  the  spectator  the  memory  of  certain  like  mani- 
festations on  his  own  part  and  through  these  of  the  emotion 
which  in  his  own  case  was  their  antecedent.  Either  way, 
the  spectator's  idea  of  the  other  person's  affection  is  in  no 
sense  a  copy  of  it,  or  that  affection  in  a  fainter  form.  If  it 
is  an  idea  of  an  impression  of  reflection  at  all,  it  is  of  such 
an  impression  as  experienced  by  the  spectator  himself,  and 
determined,  as  Hume  admits,  by  his  consciousness  of  himself; 
nor  could  any  conveyance  of  vivacity  to  the  idea  make  it 
other  than  that  impression.  How  it  should  become  to  the 
spectator  consciously  at  once  another's  impression  and  his 
own,  remains  unexplained.  Hume  only  seems  to  explain  it 
by  means  of  the  equivocation  lurking  in  the  phrase,  *  idea 
of  another's  affection.'  The  reader,  not  reflecting  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  copying  theory,  so  far  as  the  idea  is  a  copy 
of  anything  in  the  other,  it  can  only  be  a  copy  of  certain 
'  external  signs,  &c.,'  and  so  far  as  it  is  a  copy  of  an  affection, 
only  of  an  affection  experienced  by  the  man  who  has  the  idea, 
thinks  of  it  as  being  to  the  spectator  the  other's  affection 
minus  a  certain  amount  of  vivacity — the  restoration  of  which 
will  render  it  an  impression  at  once  his  own  and  the  other's. 
It  can  in  truth  only  be  so  in  virtue  (a)  of  an  interpretation 
of  words  and  gestures,  as  related  to  a  person,  which  no  sug- 
gestion by  impressions  of  their  usual  attendants  can  account 
for,  and  in  virtue  (h)  of  there  being  such  a  conceived 
identity,  or  unity  in  difference,  between  the  spectator's  own 

'  Vol.  n.,  pp.  111-114. 


344  INTRODUCTION  IL 

I)erson  and  the  person  of  the  other  that  the  same  impression, 
in  being  determined  by  his  consciousness  of  himself,  is  de- 
termined also  by  his  conscionsness  of  the  other  as  an  '  alter 
ego/  Thus  sympathy,  according  to  Hume's  account  of  it, 
so  soon  as  that  account  is  rationalised,  is  found  to  inyolre 
the  determination  of  pleasure  and  pain,  not  merely  by  self- 
consciousness,  but  by  a  self-consciousness  which  is  also 
self-identification  with  another.  If  self-consciousness  cannot 
in  any  of  its  functions  be  reduced  to  an  impression  or  suc- 
cession of  impressions,  least  of  all  can  it  in  this.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  it  is  only  through  its  constitutive  action,  its 
reflection  of  itself  upon  successive  impressions  of  sense,  that 
these  become  the  permanent  objects  which  we  know,  we  can 
understand  how  by  a  like  action  on  certain  impressions  of 
reflection,  certain  emotions  and  desires,  it  constitutes  those 
objects  of  interest  which  we  love  as  ourselves. 
Ambiguity  41.  Pride,  love,  and  sympathy,  then,  are  the  motives  which 
counts"  Hume  must  have  granted  him,  if  his  moral  theory  is  to 
benevo-  march.  Sympathy  is  not  only  necessary  to  his  explanation 
lonce.  ^f  ^j^^  most  important  form  of  pride  which  is  the  motive  to 
a  man  in  maintaining  a  character  with  his  neighbours  when 
*  nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  it ' — nothing,  that  is,  beyond 
the  immediate  pleasure  it  gives — and  of  all  forms  of  ^  love,' 
except  those  of  which  the  exciting  cause  lies  in  the  pleasures 
of  beauty  and  sexual  appetite :  he  finds  in  it  also  the  ground 
of  benevolence.  Where  he  first  treats  of  benevolence, 
indeed,  this  does  not  appear.  Unlike  pride  and  humility,  we 
are  told,  which  *  are  pure  emotions  of  the  soul,  unattended 
with  any  desire,  and  not  immediately  exciting  us  to  action, 
love  and  hatred  are  not  completed  within  themselves.  .  .  Love 
is  always  followed  by  a  desire  of  the  happiness  of  the  person 
beloved,  and  an  aversion  to  his  misery ;  as  hatred  produces 
a  desire  of  the  misery,  and  an  aversion  to  the  happiness,  of 
the  person  hated.'  ^  This  actual  sequence  of  *  benevolence ' 
and  'anger'  severally  upon  love  and  hatred  is  due,  it 
appears,  to  'an  original  constitution  of  the  mind'  which 
It  18  a  cannot  be  further  accounted  for.  That  benevolence  is  no 
thlKrefore*  essential  part  of  love  is  clear  fix>m  the  fact  that  the  latter 
has  passion  'may  express  itself  in  a  hundred  ways,  and  may 

foHte™      subsist  a  considerable  time,  without  our  reflecting  on  the 

object. 

»  Vol.  n.,  p.  153. 


RELATION  OF  LOVE  TO  BENEVOLENCE.  846 

happiness  of  its  object.'  Doubtless,  when  we  do  reflect  on  What  ^ 
it,  we  desire  the  happiness;  but,  *if  nature  had  so  pleased,  P **■"•• 
love  might  have  been  unattended  with  any  such  desire.'*  So 
far,  the  view  given  tallies  with  what  we  have  already 
quoted  from  the  summary  account  of  the  direct  and  indirect 
passions,  where  the  *  desire  of  punishment  to  our  enemies 
and  happiness  to  our  friends '  is  expressly  left  outside  the 
general  theory  of  the  passions  as  a  *  natural  impulse  wholly 
xmaccountable,'  a  *  direct  passion '  which  yet  does  not  *pro- 
ceed  from  pleasure.*  With  his  instinct  for  consistency,  how- 
ever, Hume  could  scarcely  help  seeking  to  assimilate  this 
alien  element  to  his  definition  of  desire  as  imiversally  for 
pleasure ;  and  accordingly,  while  the  above  view  of  benevo- 
lence is  never  in  so  many  words  given  up,  an  essentially 
different  one  appears  a  little  further  on,  which  by  help  of 
the  doctrime  of  sympathy  at  once  makes  the  connection  of 
benevolence  with  love  more  accountable,  and  brings  it  under 
the  general  definition  of  desire.  *  Benevolence,'  we  are  there 
told,  ^is  an  original  pleasure  arising  from  the  pleasure  of 
the  person  beloved,  and  a  pain  proceeding  from  his  pain, 
from  which  correspondence  of  impressions  there  arises  a 
subsequent  desire  of  his  pleasure  and  aversion  to  his  pain.'  • 

42.  Now,  strictly  construed,  this  passage  seems  to  efface  Pleasure  of 
the  one  clear    distinction  of  benevolence  that  had  been  5iS?Sbe^ 
previously  insisted    on — that  it    is    a  desire,  namely,   as  pleasure  of 
opposed  to  a  pure  emotion.    If  benevolence  is  an  *  original  *'*<^"**'' 
pleasure  arising  from  the  pleasure  of  the  person  beloved,'  it 
is  identical  with  love,  so  far  as  sympalhy  is  an  exciting 
cause  of  love,  instead  of  being   distinguished  from  it  as 
desire  from  emotion.     We  must  suppose,  however,  that  the 
sentence  was  carelessly  put  together,  and  that  Hume  did  not 
really  mean  to  identify  benevolence  with  the  pleasure  spoken 
of  in  the  former  part  of  it  (for  which  his  proper  term  is 
simply  sympathy),  but  with  the  desire  for  that  pleasure, 
spoken  of  in  the  latter  part.     In  that  case  we  find  that 
benevolence  forms  no  exception  to  the  general  definition  of 

'  Vol.  n.,  p.  164.  two  kinds,  the  general  and  the  partuM- 

«  Vol.  iL,  p.  170.    Compare  Vol.  !▼.,  lar.    The  first  is,  where  we  hare  no 

*  Inquirr  ocmcerning  the  Principles  of  friendship,  or  connection,  or  esteem  for 
Morals,   Appendix  n.,  note  8,   where  the  person,  but  feel  only  a  general  sym- 

*  general  benevolence,' also  called  *hn-  pathy  with  bim,  or  a  compassion  for 
manity/  is  identified  with  sympathy.'  his  pains,  and  a  congratulation  with 
'  Benerolenoe  is  naturally  divided  into  bis  pleasures,*  &c.  &c. 

(UNI  VETvSiTT/ 


346 


INTRODUCTION  11. 


i*|)U- 


Ail 

BlODfl 

equally 
interested 
or  dis- 
interested. 


desire.  It  is  desire  for  one's  own  pleasure,  but  for  a  pleasure 
received  through  the  communication  by  sympathy  of  the 
pleasure  of  another.  In  like  manner,  the  sequence  of  bene- 
volence upon  love,  instead  of  being  an  unaccountable  *  dis- 
position of  nature,'  would  seem  explicable,  as  merely  the 
ordinary  sequence  upon  a  pleasant  emotion  of  a  desire  for 
its  renewal.  Though  it  be  not  strictly  the  pleasant  emotion 
of  love,  but  that  of  sympathy,  for  which  benevolence  is  the 
desire,  yet  if  sympathy  is  necessary  to  the  excitement  of 
love,  it  will  equally  follow  that  benevolence  attends  on  love. 
Pleasure  sympathised  with,  we  may  suppose,  first  excites 
the  secondary  emotion  of  love,  and  afterwards,  when  reflected 
on,  that  desire  for  its  continuance  or  renewal,  which  is 
benevolence.  That  love  *  should  express  itself  in  a  hundred 
ways,  and  subsist  a  considerable  time '  without  any  conscious- 
ness of  benevolence,  will  merely  be  the  natural  relation  of 
emotion  to  desire.  When  a  pleasure  is  in  full  enjoyment,  it 
cannot  be  so  reflected  on  as  to  excite  desire ;  and  thus,  if 
benevolence  is  desire  for  that  pleasure  in  the  pleasure  of 
another,  which  is  an  exciting  cause  of  love,  the  latter 
emotion  must  naturally  subsist  and  express  itself  for  some 
time  before  it  reaches  the  stage  in  which  reflection  on  its 
cause,  and  with  it  benevolent  desire,  ensues. 

48.  This  rationale^  however,  of  the  relation  between  love 
and  benevolence  is  not  explicitly  given  by  Hume  himself. 
He  nowhere  expressly  withdraws  the  exception,  made  in 
favour  of  benevolence,  to  the  rule  that  all  desire  is  for 
pleasure — an  exception  which,  once  admitted,  undermines 
his  whole  system-— or  tells  us  in  so  many  words  that  bene- 
volence is  desire  for  pleasure  to  oneself  in  the  pleasure  of 
another.  In  an  important  note  to  the  Essays,^  indeed,  he 
distinctly  puts  benevolence  on  the  same  footing  with  such 
desires  as  avarice  or  ambition.  ^A  man  is  no  more 
interested  when  he  seeks  his  own  glory,  than  when  the 
happiness  of  his  friend  is  the  object  of  his  wishes ;  nor  is  he 
any  more  disinterested  when  he  sacrifices  his  own  ease  and 
quiet  to  public  good,  than  when  he  laboiu-s  for  the  gratifica- 
tion of  avarice  or  ambition.'  ...  *  Though  the  satisfaction  of 
these  latter  passions  gives  us  enjoyment,  yet  the  prospect  of 
this  enjoyment  is  not  the  cause  of  the  passion,  but,  on  the 


'  *  Inquiry  oonceming  Human  Un- 
dentanding,*    note  to  sec  1.    In  the 


editions  after  the  second,  this  nota  was 
omitted. 


RELATION  OF  LOVE  TO  PITT.  847 

contrary,  the  passion  is  antecedent  to  the  enjoyment,  and  ConftiBion 
without  the  former  the  latter  could  not  possibly  exist/     In  *^"^^" 
other  words,  if  'passion'  means  desire — and,  as  applied  to  'pnssiou* 
emotioriy  the  designation  *  interested '  or  *  disinterested  '  has  ^^^^^qji 
no  meaning — every  passion  is  equally  disinterested  in  the  emotion, 
sense  of  presupposing  an  '  enjoyment,'  a  pleasant  emotion, 
antecedent  to  that  which  consists  in  its  satisfaction  ;  but  at 
the  same  time  equally  interested  in  the  sense  of  being  a 
desire  for  sucl^  enjoyment.     Whether  from  a  wish  to  find 
acceptance,  however,  or  because  forms  of  man's  good-will  to 
man  forced  themselves  on  his  notice  which  forbade  the  con- 
sistent development  of  his  theory,  Hume  is  always  much 
more  explicit  about  the  disinterestedness  of  benevolence  in 
the  former  sense  than  about  its  interestedness  in  the  latter.* 
Accordingly  he  does  not  avail  himself  of  such  an  explana- 
tion of  its  relation  to  love  as  that  above  indicated,  which  by 
avowedly  reducing    benevolence  to  a  desire  for  pleasure, 
while  it  simplified  his   system,  might  have  revolted  the 
'  common  sense '  even  of  the  eighteenth  century.    He  prefers 
— as  his  manner  is,  when  he  comes  upon  a  question  which 
he  cannot  &ce — to  fall  back  on  a  '  disposition  of  nature '  as 
the  ground  of  the  *  conjunction '  of  benevolence  with  love.  Of  this 
There  is  a  form  of  benevolence,  however,  which  would  seem  ^^^^0^. 
as    little    explicable  by   such    natural    conjunction   as    by  selfinhia 
reduction  to  a  desire  for  sympathetic  pleasure.     How  is  it  aw»i"»t .f^ 
that  active  good- will  is  shown  towards  those  whom,  accord- 
ing to  Hume's  theory  of  love,  it  should  be  impossible  to 
love — ^towards  those  with  whom  intercourse  is  impossible,  or 
from  whom,  if  intercourse  is  possible,  we  can  derive  no  such 
pleasure  as  is  supposed  necessary  to  excite  that  pleasant 
emotion,  but  rather  such  pain,  in  sympathy  with  their  pain, 
as  according  to  the  theory  should  excite  hatred  P    To  this 
^question  Hume  in  effect  finds  an  answer  in  the  simple  device 
of  using  the  same  terms,  *  pity '  and  *  compassion,'  alike  for 
the  painful  emotion  produced  by  the  spectacle  of  another's 

*  Attention  should  be  called  to  a  original  frame  of  onr  temper  we  may 
passage  at  the  end  of  the  account  of  feel  a  desire  for  another's  happiness  or 
'  self-lore '  in  the  Essays,  where  he  seems  good,  which,  by  means  of  that  affection, 
to  revert  to  the  riew  of  benevolence  as  becomes  our  own  good,  and  is  afber- 
a  desire  not  origimdny  produced  by  wards  pursued  from  the  combined  mo- 
pleasure,  but  productive  of  it,  and  thus  tivee  of  benevolence  and  self-enjoyment.* 
passing  into  a  secondary  stage  in  which  The  passage  might  have  been  written 
It  is  combined  with  desire  for  pleasure.  by  Butler.  (Vol.  iv.,  '  Inquiry  concern- 
He  suggests  tentatively  that  'from  the  ing  Principles  of  Morals/  Appendix  n.) 


active  pity. 


348  INTRODUCTION  IL 

paiii   and  for  'desire  for  the  happiness  of   another  and 
aversion  to  his  misery/  '     According  to  the  latter  account 
of  it,  pity  is  already  *  the  same   desire '  as  benevolence, 
though  *  proceeding  from  a  diflFerent  principle/  and  thus 
has  a  resemblance  to  the  love  with  which  benevolence  is 
conjoined — a  *  resemblance  not  of  feeling  or  sentiment  but 
of  tendency  or  direction.'*    Hence,  whereas  *pity'  in  the 
former  sense  would  make  us  hate  those  whose  pain  gives  us 
pain,  by  understanding  it  in  the  latter  sense  ^e  can  explain 
how  it  leads  us  to  love  them,  on  the  principle  that  one 
resembling  passion  excites  another. 
KzplADA-         44.  We  are  now  in  a  position  to  review  the  possible 
^^  °^nt     ™^^*^^®8  ^f  human  action  according  to  Hume.     Eeason,  con- 
conflict       stituting  no  objects,  affords  no  motives.    'It  is  only  the 
between      slave  of  the  passious,  and  can  never  pretend  to  any  other 
office  than  to  serve  and  obey  them.'  *    To  any  logical  thinker 
who  accepted  Locke's   doctrine  of  reason,  as  having  no 
other  function  but  to  '  lay  in  order  intermediate  ideas,'  this 
followed  of  necessity.    It  is  the  clearness  with  which  Hume 
points  out  that,  as  it  cannot  move,  so  neither  can  it  restrain, 
action,  that  in  this  regard  chiefly  distinguishes  him  from 
Locke.     The  check  to  any  passion,  he  points  out,  can  only 
proceed    from    some    counter-motive,  and  such  a    motive 
reason,  *  having  no  original  influence,'  cannot  give.    Strictly 
speaking,  then,  a  passion  can  only  be  called  unreasonable, 
as  accompanied  by  some  false  judgment,  which  on  its  part 
must  consist  in  '  disagreement  of  ideas,  considered  as  copies, 
with  those  objects  which  they  represent ; '  and  '  even  then  it 
is  not  the  passion,  properly  speaking,  which  is  unreasonable, 
but  the  judgment.'     It  is  nothing  against  reason — not,  as 
Locke  had  inadvertently  said,  a  wrong  judgment — *  to  prefer 
my  own  acknowledged  lesser  good  to  my  greater.'     The  only 
unreasonableness  would  lie  in    supposing  that    'my  own 
acknowledged  lesser  good,'  being  preferred,  could  be  attained 
by  means  that  would  not  really  lead  to  it.    Hence  '  we  speak 
not  strictly  when  we   talk  of  the  combat  of  reason  and 
passion.'     They  can  in  truth  never  oppose  each  other.     The 
supposition  that  they  do  so  arises  from  a  confrision  between 

>  Book    n.,  part  2,  sees.  7  and  9.  desiie  for  the  happiness  of  another,' 

Vfithin  a  few  lines  of  each  other  will  &c. 

be  found  the  statements  (a)  that  'pity  '  'Dissertation on thePassions* (in the 

10  an  uneasiness  arising  from  the  misery  Essays),  see.  8,  sub-sec.  6. 

fi   others/    and    (b)    that    '  pity    is  '  Vol.  ii.,  p.  196. 


BEASON  GIVES  NO  MOTIVE.  849 

^calm  passions'  and  reason — a  confusion  founded  on  the 
&ct  that  the  former  '  produce  little  emotion  in  the  mind, 
while  the  operation  of  reason  produces  none  at  all.'  ^  Calm 
passions,  undoubtedly,  do  often  conflict  with  the  violent  ones 
and  even  prevail  over  them,  and  thus,  as  the  violent  passion 
causes  most  uneasiness,  it  is  untrue  to  say  with  Locke  *  that 
it  is  the  most  pressing  uneasiness  which  always  determines 
action.  The  calmness  of  a  passion  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  weakness,  nor  its  violence  with  strength.  A  desire  may 
be  calm  either  because  its  object  is  remote,  or  because  it  is 
customary.  In  the  former  case,  it  is  true,  the  desire  is  likely 
to  be  relatively  weak ;  but  in  the  latter  case,  the  calmer  the 
desire,  the  greater  is  likely  to  be  its  strength,  since  the 
repetition  of  a  desire  has  the  twofold  effect,  on  the  one 
hand  of  diminishing  the  *  sensible  emotion'  that  accom- 
panies it,  on  the  other  hand  of  '  bestowing  a  facility  in  the 
performance  of  the  action'  corresponding  to  the  desire, 
which  in  turn  creates  a  new  inclination  or  tendency  that 
combines  with  the  original  desire.* 

45.  The  distinction,  then,  between  '  reasonable '  and  '  un-  j^ 
reasonable'  desires — and  it  is  only  desires    that  can   be  able' de- 
referred  to  when  will,  or  the  determination  to  action,  is  in  "^  ^^ 
question — in  the  only  sense  in  which  Hume  can  admit  it,  is  excites 
a  distinction  not  of  objects  but  of  our  situation  in  regard  to  ^^^^^ 
them.    The  object  of  desire  in  every  case — ^whether  near  or 
remote,  whether  either  by  its  novelty  or  by  its  contrariety 
to  other  passions  it  excites  more  or  less  '  sensible  emotion' — 
is  still  ^  good,'  t.e.  pleasure.     The  greater  the  pleasure  in 
prospect,  the  stronger  the  desire.^    The  only  proper  ques- 
tion, then,  according  to  Hume,  as  to  the  pleasure  which  in 
any  particular  case  is  an  object  of  desire  will  be  whether  it 

*  Vol.  n.,  pp.  195,  106.  facilitates  action,  if  we  -will  persist  in 

*  Above,  sec.  3.  asking  the  idle  question  about  the 
'  Vol  n.  pp.  198-200.  relative  strength  of  desires,  we  must 
It  will  be  found  that  here  Hume      suppose  that  the  most  habitual  is  the 

might  have  stated  his  case  much  more  strongest 

suocinctlj  by  avoiding    the  equivocal  *    Cf.  p.   198.      *The  same   good, 

use  of 'passion' at  once  for 'desire 'and  when  near,  will  cause  a  violent  pas- 

*  emotion.*    When  a  '  passion '  is  desig-  sion,   which,    when    remote,   produces 

nated  as  '  calm '  or  'violent,' '  passion '  only  a  calm  one.*    The  expression,  here, 

means    emotion.      When    tbe    terms  is  obviously  inaccurate.    It  cannot  be 

'strong' and 'weak' are  applied  to  it,  the  same  good  in  Hume's  sense,  is. 

it  means  *  desire.'  Since  of  tke  strength  equally  pleasant  in  prospect,  when  s^ 

of  any  desire  there  is  in  truth  no  test  mote  as  when  near. 
bi*t  the   resulting   action,  and    habit 


SoO 


INTRODUCTION  II. 


EDumon- 
tioD  of 
possible 
motiTM. 


If  pleasure 
sole  mo- 
tiTB,  what 
ifl  the  dis- 
tinction of 
self-love  ? 


is  (a)  an  immediate  impression  of  sense,  or  (b)  a  pleasure  of 
pride,  or  (c)  one  of  sympathy.  Under  the  first  head,  appa- 
rently, he  wonld  include  pleasures  incidental  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  appetite,  and  pleasures  corresponding  to  the  several 
senses — not  only  the  smells  and  tastes  we  call  *  sweet,'  but 
the  sights  and  sounds  we  call  *  beautiful.'^  Pleasures  of  this 
sort,  we  must  suppose,  are  the  uliimate  *  exciting  causes  '*  of 
all  those  secondary  ones,  which  are  distinguished  from  their 
*  exciting  causes '  as  determined  by  the  ideas  either  of  self 
or  of  another  thinking  person — the  pleasures,  namely,  of 
pride  and  sympathy.  Sympathetic  pleasure,  again,  will  be 
of  two  kinds,  according  as  the  pleasure  in  the  pleasure  of 
another  does  or  does  not  excite  the  further  pleasure  of  love 
for  the  other  person.  K  the  object  desired  is  none  of  these 
pleasures,  nor  the  means  to  them,  it  only  remains  for  the 
follower  of  Hume  to  suppose  that  it  is  ^  pleasure  in  general ' — 
the  object  of  *  self  love.' 

46.  Anyone  reading  the  '  Treatise  on  Human  Nature ' 
alongside  of  Shaftesbury  or  Butler  would  be  surprised  to  find 
that  while  sympathy  and  benevolence  fill  a  very  large  place 
in  it,  self-love  ^eo  nomine '  has  a  comparatively  small  one.  At 
first,  perhaps,  he  would  please  himself  with  thinking  that  he 
had  come  upon  a  more  ^genial'  system  of  morals.  The 
true  account  of  the  matter,  however,  he  will  find  to  be  that, 
whereas  with  Shaftesbury  and  his  followers  the  notion  of 
self-love  was  really  determined  by  opposition  to  those  desires 
for  other  objects  than  pleasure,  in  the  existence  of  which 
they  really  believed,  however  much  the  current  psychology 
may  have  embarrassed  their  belief,  on  the  other  hand  with 
Hume's  explicit  reduction  of  all  desire  to  desire  for  pleasure 
self-love  loses  the  significance  which  this  opposition  gave  it, 
and  can  have  no  meaning  except  as  desire  for  *  pleasure  in 
general '  in  distinction  from  this  or  that  particular  pleasure. 


>  No  other  account  of  pleasure  in 
beauty  can  be  extracted  from  Hume 
than  this — ^that  it  is  either  a  '  primary 
impression  of  sense,'  so  fiir  co-ordinate 
vnth  any  pleasant  taste  or  smell  that 
but  for  an  accident  of  language  the 
term  'beautiful'  might  be  equally  ap- 
plicable to  these,  or  else  a  pleasure  m 
that  indefinite  anticipation  of  pleasure 
which  is  called  the  contemplation  of 
ntiiity. 


■  Ultimate  because  according  to 
Hume  the  immediate  exciting  cause  of  a 
pleasure  of  pride  may  be  one  of  love, 
and  vice  versa.  In  that  case,  however, 
a  more  remote  'exciting  cause'  of 
the  exciting  pleasure  must  be  found  in 
some  impressions  of  sense,  if  the  doc- 
trine that  these  are  the  able '  original 
impressions'  is  to  be  maintained. 


MEANING  OF  'SELF-LOVE'  m  HUME.  361 

Passages  from  the  Essays  maj  be  adduced,  it  is  true,  where  Its  opposi- 
self-love  is  spoken  of  under  the  same  opposition  under  j^^J^i^" 
which  Shafbesbnry  and  Hntcheson  conceived  of  it,  but  in  desire^  as 
these,  it  will  be  found,  advantage  is  taken  of  the  ambiguity  ^^^'^^^ 
between  *  emotion '  and    *  desire,'    covered    by    the    term  stood,  dis- 

*  passion.'  That  there  are  sympathetic  evnotions — pleasures  appea». 
occasioned  by  the  pleasure  of  others — is,  no  doubt,  as 
cardinal  a  point  in  Hume's  system  as  that  all  desire  is  for 
pleasure  to  self;  but  between  such  emotions  and  self-love 
there  is  no  co-ordination.  No  emotion,  as  he  points  out, 
determines  action  directly,  but  only  by  exciting  desire; 
which  with  him  can  only  mean  that  the  image  of  the  ^ 
pleasant  emotion  excites  desire  for  its  renewal  In  other 
words,  no  emotion  amounts  to  volition  or  will.     Self-love,  on 

the  other  hand,  if  it  means  anything,  means  desire  and  a 
possibly  strongest  desire,  or  will.  It  can  thus  be  no  more 
determined  by  opposition  to  generous  or  sympathetic  emottcm 
than  can  these  by  opposition  to  hunger  and  thirst.  Hume, 
however,  when  he  insists  on  the    existence  of   generous 

*  passions'  as  showing  that  self-love  is  not  our  uniform 
motive,  though  he  cannot  consistently  mean  more  than  that 

desire  for  *  pleasure  in  general,'  or  desire  for  the  satisfaction  it »  desire 
of  desire,  is  not  the  uniform  motive — which  might  equally  ^^^ 
be  shown  (as  he  admits)  by  pointing  to  such  self-regarding  geneml. 

*  passions '  as  love  of  fame,  or  such  appetites  as  hunger — is 
yet  apt,  through  the  reader's  interpretation  of  *  generous 
passions '  as  desires  for  something  other  than  pleasure,  to 
gain  credit  for  recognising  a  possibility  of  living  for  others, 
in  distinction  from  living  for  pleasure,  which  was  in  truth 
as  completely  excluded  by  his  theory  as  by  that  of  Hobbes. 
If  he  himself  meant  to  convey  any  other  distinction  between 
self-love  and  the  generous  passions  than  one  which  would 
hold  no  less  between  it  and  every  emotion  whatever,  it  was 
through  a  fresh  intrusion  upon  him  of  that  notion  of  benevo- 
lence, as  a  ^  desire  not  founded  on  pleasure,'  which  was  in 
too  direct  contradiction  to  the  first  principles  of  his  theory 
to  be  acquiesced  in.* 

>  Cf.    n.  p.     197i  where,  speaking  or  the  general  appetite  to  good  and 

of  *calin  desires/  be  says  they  'are  ayersion  to  eril,  considered  merely  as 

of  two  kinds;   either  certain  instincts  snch.'    This  seems  to  imply  a  twofold 

originally  implanted  in  our   natures,  distinction  of  the  'geneiral  appetite  to 

such  as  benevc^ence  and  resentment,  the  good  *  (a)  from,  desires  for  particular 

lore  of  life,  and  kirdness  to  children ;  pleasures,  which    are    commonly    not 


868  IKTRODUCnON  U. 

HovHuna  47.  Soch  desire,  then,  being  excluded,  what  other  motive 
meuivto  ^^^'^^  'intetest'  lemaina,  bj  contrast  with  which  the  hitter 
thiaothflr-  maj  be  defined?  It  has  been  expbdned  above  (§7)  that 
^^  since  pleasure  as  such,  or  as  a  feeling,  does  not  admit  of 
definitioo,  generalitj,  'pleasure  in  general'  is  an  impossible  object. 
When  the  motive  of  an  action  is  said  to  be  '  pleasure  in 
general,'  what  is  really  meant  is  that  the  action  is  determined 
by  the  conception  of  pleasure,  or,  more  properly,  of  self  as  a 
subject  to  be  pleased.  Such  determination,  again,  is  dis- 
tinguished by  opposition  to  two  other  kinds — (a)  to  that  sort 
of  determination  which  is  not  by  conception,  but  either  bj 
animal  want,  or  by  the  animal  imctginaiian  of  pleasure,  and 
(6)  to  determination  by  the  conception  of  other  objects  than 
pleasure.  By  an  author,  however,  who  expressly  excluded  the 
latter  sort  of  determination,  and  who  did  not  recognise  any 
distinction  between  the  thinlring  and  the  animal  subject,  the 
motive  in  question  could  not  thus  be  defined.  Hence  the 
difficulty  of  extracting  from  Hume  himself  any  clear  and 
consistent  account  of  that  which  he  variously  describes  as 
the  *  general  appetite  for  good,  considered  merely  as  such,' 
as  '  interest,'  and  as  '  self-love.'  To  say  that  he  understood 
by  it  a  desire  for  pleasure  which  is  yet  not  a  desire  for  any 
pleasure  in  particular,  may  seem  a  strange  interpretation  to 
put  on  one  who  regarded  himself  as  a  great  liberator  from 
abstractions,  but  there  is  no  other  which  his  statements, 
taken  together,  would  justify.  This  desire  for  nothing, 
however,  he  converts  into  a  desire  for  something  by  identify- 

calm,  and  (M  from  certain  desires,  is  most  clearly  stated  in  Hntcheson's 
which  resemble  the 'general  appetite'  posthnmons  treatise — the  position, 
in  being  calm  but  are  not  for  pleasure  namely,  that  we  begin  with  a  mnldtode 
at  alL  See  above,  sec.  31.  In  that  of  'particular'  or  '  violent '  desires, 
section  of  the  Essays  where  '  self-love '  severally  '  tenninating  upon  objects ' 
is  expressly  treated  of,  there  is  a  still  which  are  not  pleasures  at  all,  and  that, 
clearer  appearance  of  the  doctrine,  that  as  reason  developes,  these  gradually 
thefe  are  desires  (in  that  instance  called  blend  with,  or  are  superseded  by,  the 
'mental  passions')  which  have  not  'calm'  desire  for  pleasure:  so  that 
pleasure  for  their  object  any  more  than  moral  growth  means  the  access  of 
have  such  '  bodily  wants '  as  hunger  and  conscious  pleasure-seeking.  This  in 
thirst  f^m  these  self-love,  as  desire  effect  seems  to  be  Butler's  view,  and 
for  pleasure,  is  distinguished,  though,  Hutcheson  reckons  it 'a  lovely  represent- 
when  the  pleasure  incidental  to  their  ation  of  human  nature,'  though  he  him- 
satisfaction  is  discovered  and  reflected  self  holds  that  benevolence  may  exist, 
on,  it  is  supposed  to  combine  with  them.  not  merely  as  one  of  the  '  particular 
(Vol.  rv.  Appendix  on  Self-love,  near  desires '  controlled  by  self-love,  but  as 
the  end.  See  above,  sec  48  and  note.)  itself  a  'calm 'and  controlling  principle, 
This  amounts,  in  &ct^  to  a  complete  co-ordinate  with  self-love.  (System  of 
withdrawal  from  Hume's  original  Moral  Philosophy,'  Vol.  i.  p.  Al,  ^) 
poi>ition  and  the  adoption  of  one  which 


RESULT  OF  HIS  THEORY  OF  MOTIVES.  863 

ing  ii  on  occasion,  (1)  with  any  desire  for  a  pleasure  of  'Interesf, 
which  the  attainment  is  regarded  as  sufficiently  remote  to  ^oti^^s*' 
allow  of  calmness  in  the  desire,  and  (2)  with  desire  for  the  described, 
meacs  of  having  all  pleasures  indifferently  at  command.     It  ^|^[^*' 
is  in  one  or  other  of  these  senses — either  as  desire  for  some  tion  by 
particular  pleasure  distinguished  only  by  its  calmness,  or  as  '«»■<»• 
desire  for  power — that  he  always  understands  *  interest  *  or 

*  self-love,*  except  where  he  gains  a  more  precise  meaning  for 
it  by  the  admission  of  desires,  not  for  pleasure  at  all,  to 
which  it  may  be  opposed.  Now  taken  in  the  former  sense, 
its  difference  from  the  desires  for  the  several  pleasures  of 

*  sense,'  *  pride,'  and  '  sympathy,'  of  which  Hume's  account 
has  already  been  examined,  cannot  lie  in  the  object,  but — 
as  he  himself  says  of  the  distinction,  which  he  regarded  as 
an  equivalent  one,  between  *  reasonable  and  unreasonable ' 
desires — in  our  situation  with  regard  to  it.  If  then  the 
object  of  each  of  these  desires,  as  we  have  shown  to  be 
implied  in  Hume's  account  of  them,  is  one  which  only 
reason,  as  self-consciousness,  can  constitute,  it  cannot  be 
less  so  when  the  desire  is  calm  enough  to  be  called  self-love. 
Still  more  plainly  is  the  desire  in  question  determined  by 
reason — ^by  the  conception  of  self  as  a  permanent  suscepti- 
bility of  pleasure — if  it  is  understood  to  be  desire  for 
power. 

48.  Having  now  before  us  a  complete  view  of  the  possible  Thus 
motives  to  human  action  which  Hume  admits,  we  find  that  ha^g  de- 
while  he  has  carried  to  its  furthest  limit,  and  with  the  least  graded 
verbal  inconsistency  possible,  the  effort  to  make  thought  ^^^^^^ 
deny  its  own  originativeness  in  action,  he  has  yet  not  sue-  sake  of 
ceeded.     He  has  made  abstraction  of  everything  in    the  ^ncy*after 
objects  of  human  interest  but  their  relation  to  our  nervous  all  is  not 
irritability — he  has  left  nothing  of  the  beautiful  in  nature  or  consistent. 
art  but  that  which  it  has  in  common  with  a  sweetmeat, 
nothing  of  that  which  is  lovely  and  of  good  report  to  the 
saint  or  statesman  but  what  they  share  with  the  dandy  or 
diner-out — ^yet  he  cannot  present  even  this  poor  residuum  of 
an   object,  by  which  all  action  is  to  be  explained,  except 
under  the  character  it  derives  from  the  thinking  soul,  which 
looks  before  and  after,  and  determines  everything  by  relation 
to   itself.     Thus   if,   as   he   says,   the   distinction    between 
reasonable  and   unreasonable  desires   does  not  lie   in   the 
object,  this  will  not  be  because  reason  has  never  anything  to 

VOL.  I.  A  A 


364  INTRODUCTION   U. 

do  with  the  constitutioii  of  the  object,  bnt  because  it  baa 
always  so  mach  to  do  with  it  as  renders  selfishness — ^the  self- 
eonscioos  pursuit   of  pleasure — ^possible.     Sensualitj   then 
will    have    been    yindicated,  the  distinction  between   the 
*  higher '  and  *  lower '  modes  of  life  will  have  been  erased, 
and  after  all  the  theoretic  consistency — for  the  sake  of  which, 
and  not,  of  course,  to  gratify  any  sinister  interest,  Hume 
made  his  philosophic  venture — ^will  not  have  been  attained. 
Man  will  still  not  be  ultimately  passive,  nor  human  action 
natural.     Season  may  be  the  '  slave  of  the  passions,'  but  it 
will  be  a  self-imposed  subjection. 
If  ^  good       49^  "^g  liai,Te  still,  however,  to  explain  how  Hume  himself 
what  18    '  completes  the   assimilation  of  the  moral  to  the  natural ; 
"^j'         how,  on  the  supposition  that  the  *  good '  can  only  mean  the 
^^^^^  *  pleasant,'  he  accounts  for  the  apparent  distinction  between 

moral  and  other  good,  for  the  intrusion  of  the  'ought  and 
ought  not '  of  ethical  propositions  upon  the  ^  is  and  is  not ' 
of  truth  concerning  nature.*  Here  again  he  is  faithful  to 
his  rSle  as  the  expander  and  expurgator  of  Locke.  With 
Locke,  it  will  be  remembered,  the  distinction  of  moral  good 
lay  in  the  channel  through  which  the  pleasure,  that  consti- 
tutes it,  is  derived.  It  was  pleasure  accruing  through  the 
intervention  of  law,  as  opposed  to  the  operation  of  nature : 
and  from  the  pleasure  thus  accruing  the  term  'morally 
good'  ¥ras  transferred  to  the  act  which,  as  'conformable  to 
some  law,'  occasions  it.*  This  view  Hume  retains,  merely 
remedying  Locke's  omissions  and  inconsistencies.  Locke,  as 
Ambi^ty  ^e  g^w,  not  Only  neglected  to  derive  the  existence  of  the 
dew.  ^'  laws,  whose  intervention  he  counted  necessary  to  constitute 
the  morally  good,  from  the  operation  of  that  desire  for 
pleasure  which  he  pronounced  the  only  motive  of  man ;  in 
speaking  of  moral  goodness  as  consisting  in  conformity  to 
law,  he  might,  if  taken  at  his  word,  be  held  to  admit  some- 
thing quite  different  from  pleasure  alike  as  the  standard 
and  the  motive  of  morality.  Hume  then  had,  in  the  first 
'  place,  to  account  for  the  laws  in  question,  and  so  account 
for  them  as  to  remove  that  absolute*  opposition  between 
them  and  the  operation  of  nature  which  Locke  had  taken 
for  granted  ;  secondly,  to  exhibit  that  conformity  to  law,  in 
which  the  moral  goodness  of  an  act  was  held  to  consist,  as 

»  V'ol.  II.  p.  245.  «  Abore,  lecs.  16-18. 


HIS  MODIFICATION  OF  LOCKE'S  '  LAWa'  856 

itself  a  mode  of  pleasure — pleasure,  namely,  to  the  contera- 
plator  of  the  act ;  and  thirdly,  to  show  that  not  the  moral 
goodness  of  the  act,  even  thus  understood,  but  pleasure  to 
himself  was  the  motive  to  the  doer  of  it.* 

50.  It  was  a  necessary  incident  of  this  process  that 
Lockers  notion  of  a  Law  of  Gk>d,  conformity  to  which 
rendered  actions  *in  their  own  nature  right  and  wrong,' 
should  disappear.  The  existence  of  such  a  law  cannot  be 
explained  as  a  result  of  any  desire  for  pleasure,  nor  con- 
formity to  it  as  a  mode  of  pleasure.  Locke,  indeed,  tries  to  DeToiop- 
bring  the  goodness,  consisting  in  such  conformity,  under  his  ^y^^^ 
general  definition  by  treating  it  as  equivalent  to  the  pro- 
duction of  pleasure  in  another  world.  This,  however,  is  to 
seek  refuge  from  the  contradictory  in  the  unmeaning.  The 
question— Is  it  the  pleasure  it  produces,  or  its  conformity  to 
law,  that  constitutes  the  goodness  of  an  actP — remains 
unanswered,  while  the  farther  one  is  suggested — What 
meaning  has  pleasure  except  as  the  pleasure  we  experi- 
ence P  •  Between  pleasure,  then,  and  a  *  conformity '  irre- 
ducible to  pleasure,  as  the  moral  standard,  the  reader  of 
Locke  had  to  chose.  Clarke,  supported  by  Locke's  occa- 
sional assimilation  of  moral  to  mathematical  truth,  had 
elaborated  the  notion  of  conformity.     To  him  an  action  was 

*  in  its  own  nature  right'  when  it  conformed  to  the  *  reason 
of  things  * — i.e.  to  certain  *  eternal  proportions,*  by  which 
God,  *qui  omnia  numero,  ordine,  mensurft  posuit,*  obliges  which 
Himself  to  govern  the  world,  and  of  which  reason  in  us  is  ^^fo, 

*  the  appearance.'  •    Thus  reason,  as  an  eternal  *  agreement  want  of 
or  disagreement  of  ideas,'  was  the  standard  to  which  action  ^j|^^ 
ought  to  conform,  and,  as  our  consciousness  of  such  agree- 
ment, at  once  the  judge  of  and  motive  to  conformity.     To 

this  Hume's  reply  is  in  effect  the  challenge  to  instance  any 
act,  of  which  the  morality  consists  either  in  any  of  those 
four  relations,  'depending  on  the  nature  of  the  ideas 
related,'  which  he  regarded  as  alone  admitting  of  demon- 
stration, or  in  any  other  of  those  relations  (contiguity,  • 
identity,  and  cause  ahd  effect)  which,  as  *  matters  of  fact,' 
can  be  *  discovered  by  the  understanding.'*  Such  a  challenge 

'  Of  the  three  problems  here  specified,  ■  Above,  sec.  14. 

Hume's  treatment  of  the  seeemd  is  dis-  •  Boyle  Lectures,  Vol.  n.  prop.   1. 

cussed  in  the  following  sees.  60-64 ;  of  sees.  1-4. 

the  Jirtt  in  sees.  66-68 ;  of  the  third  in  «  Book  in.  part  1,  sec.  1.    (Cf.BooK 

seqs.  60  to  the  end.  i.  part  3,  sec.  1,  and   Introduction  to 

A  A2 


356  INTRODUCTION  U. 

admits  of  no  reply,  and  no  other  function  bnt  the  perception 
of  such  relations  being  allowed  to  reason  or  understanding 
in  the  school  of  Locke,  it  follows  that  it  is  not  this  faculty 
which  either  constitutes,  or  gives  the  consciousness  of,  the 
morally  good.  Eeason  excluded,  feeling  remains.  No  action, 
then,  can  be  called  ^  right  in  its  own  nature,'  if  that  is  taken 
to  imply  (as  '  conformity  to  divine  law '  must  be),  relation 
to  something  else  than  our  feeling.  It  could  only  be  so 
called  with  propriety  in  the  sense  of  exciting  some  pleasure 
immediaiely,  as  distinct  from  an  act  which  may  be  a  con- 
dition of  the  attainment  of  pleasure,  but  does  not  directly 
convey  it. 
With  51.  So  far,  however,  there  is  nothing  to  distinguish  the 

moraieood  ™^^  ^*  either  from  any  *  inanimate  object,'  which  may 
is  pieascre  equally  excite  immediate  pleasure,  or  from  actions  which 
excited  in  have  no  character,  as  virtuous  or  vicious,  at  all.  Some 
ticular  further  limitation,  then,  must  be  found  for  the  immediate 
^*^7'  pleasure  which  constitutes  the  goodness  called  '  moral,'  and 

of  which  praise  is  the  expression.  This  Hume  finds  in  the 
exciting  object  which  must  be  (a)  *  considered  in  general 
and  without  reference  to  our  particular  interest,'  and  (6)  an 
object  so  *  related '  (in  the  sense  above  '  explained)  to  oneself 
or  to  another  as  that  the  pleasure  which  it  excites  shall 
cause  the  further  pleasure  either  of  pride  or  love.*  The 
precise  effect  of  such  limitation  be  does  not  explain  in 
detail.  A  man's  pictures,  gardens,  and  clothes,  we  have 
been  told,  tend  to  excite  pride  in  himself  and  love  in  others. 
If  then  we  can  ^consider  them  in  general  and  vnthout 
reference  to  our  particular  interest,'  and  in  such  *mere 
survey'  find  pleasure,  this  pleasure,  according  to  Hume's 
showing,  will  constitute  them  morally  good.*  He  usually  takes 
for  granted,  however,  a  further  limitation  of  the  pleasure  in 

Vol.  I.  Bees.  283  and  ff.)  It  will  be  observed  245)  that  *  vice  and  virtue  may  be  com- 

that    tliTonghoat  the  polemic  against  pared  to  sounds,  colours,  heat  and  cold, 

Clarke  and  his  congeners  Hume  writes  as  which  are  not  qualities  in  objects,  but 

if  there  were  a  difference  between  object*  perceptions  in  the  mind.'    But,   since 

of  reason  and  feeling,  which  he  could  the  whole  drift  of  Book  i.  is  to  show 

not  consistently  admit     He  begins  by  that  all  *  objective  relations*  are  such 

putting  the  question  thus  (page  234),  *  perceptions '  or  their  succession,  this 

'  whether  'tis  by  means  of  our  ideas  or  still  leaves  us  without  any  distinction 

impressions  we  distinguish  betwixt  vice  between  science  and  morality  that  shall 

and  virtue : '  but  if,  as  he  tells  us,  '  the  be  tenable  according  to  his  own  doctrine, 

idea  is  merely  the  weaker  impression,  '  Sec.  33. 

Hnd  the  impression  the  stronger  idea,'  •  Vol.  ii.  pp.  247  and  248. 

such  H  question  has  no  meaning.   In  like  '  Hume  treats  them  as  such  in  Boo^ 

muuner  hu  lOTicludea  by  Fnyinf  (pi\ge  in.  part  3,  sec.  6. 


iqS  ACCOUNT  OF  *M01tAL  SENSE.'  867 

questioOy    as    excited    only  by  *  actions,   sentiments,    and  fib.:  in  the 
characters,'  and  thus  finds  virtue  to  consist  in  the  '  satisfac-  ^If^'^ 
tion  produced  to  the  spectator  of  an  act  or  character  by  the  'good'  act, 
mere  view  of  it.' '    Virtues  and  vices  then  mean,  as  Locke  1?!*'?/^! 
well  said,  the  usual  likes  and  dislikes  of  society.     If  we  tendency 
choose  with  him  to  call  that  virtue  of  an  act,  which  really  ^  v^^^ 
consists  in  the  pleasure  experienced  by  the  spectator  of  it, 
*  conformity  to  the  law  of  their  opinion,'  we  may  do  so, 
provided  we  do  not  suppose  that  there  is  some  o^er  law, 
which  this  imperfectly  reflects,  and  that  the  virtue  is  some- 
thing other  than  the  pleasure,  but  to  be  inferred  from  it. 
*We  do  not  infer  a  character  to  be  virtuous,  because  it 
pleases ;  but  in  feeling  that  it  pleases  after  such  a  particular 
manner,  we  in  effect  feel  that  it  is  virtuous.'  * 

62.  Some  further  explanation,  however,  of  the  *  particular 
manner'  of  this  pleasure  was  clearly  needed  in  order  at 
once  to  adjust  it  to  the  doctrine  previously  given  of  the 
passions  (of  which  this,  as  a  pleasant  emotion,  must  be  one), 
and  to  account  for  our  speaking  of  the  actions  which  excite 
it — at  least  of  some  of  them — as  actions  which  we  (mghi  to 
do.  If  we  revert  to  the  account  of  the  passions,  we  can 
have  no  difficulty  in  fixing  on  that  of  which  this  peculiar 
pleasure,  excited  by  the  '  mere  survey '  of  an  action  without 
reference  to  the  spectator's  *  particular  interest,'  must  be  a 
mode.  It  must  be  a  kind  of  sympathy — pleasure  felt  by  the 
spectator  in  the  pleasure  of  another,  as  distinct  from  what 
might  be  felt  in  the  prospect  of  pleasure  to  himself.*  On 
the  other  hand,  there  seem  to  be  certa.in  discrepancies 
between  pleasure  and  moral  sentiment.  We  sympathise 
where  we  neither  approve  nor  disapprove ;  and,  conversely, 
we  express  approbation  where  it  would  seem  there  was  no 
pleasure  to  sympathise  with,  e.^.,  in  regard  to  an  act  of 
simple  justice,  or  where  the  person  experiencing  it  was  one 
with  whom  we  could  have  no  fellow-feeling — an  enemy,  a 
stranger,  a  character  in  history — or  where  the  experience, 
being  one  not  of  pleasure  but  of  pain  (say,  that  of  a  martyr 
at  the  stake),  should  excite  the  reverse  of  approbation  in  the 
spectator,  if  approbation  means  pleasure  sympathised  with. 
Our  sympathies,  moreover,  are  highly  variable,  but  our 
moral  sentiments  on  the  whole  constant.     How  must  *  sym- 

»  Vol.  II.  p.  251.  Cf.  p.  226.  •  Vol.  u.  p.  247.         ■  VoL  n.  pp.  836-837. 


868  INTRODUCTION  U.  ^ 

pathj '  be  qualified,  in  order  that,  when  we  identify  moral 
sentiment  with  it»  these  objections  may  be  avoided  9 
Moral  53.  Hume's  answer,  in  brief,  is  that  the  sympathy,  which 

thBTsym-  constitutes  moral  sentiment,  is  sympathy  qualified  by  the 
patiiy  wiUi  Consideration  of  *  general  tendencies/  Thus  we  sympathise 
qu^ifiod  ^^^  ^®  pleasure  arising  from  any  casual  action,  but  the 
by  con-  Sympathy  does  not  become  moral  approbation  unless  the  act 
oflrenw^  is  regarded  as  a  sign  of  some  quality  or  character,  generally 
leudencies.  and  permanently  agreeable  or  useful  («c«  productive  of 
pleasure  directly  or  indirectly)  to  the  agent  or  others.  An 
act  of  justice  may  not  be  productive  of  any  immediate 
pleasure  with  which  we  can  sympathise ;  nay,  taken  singly, 
it  may  cause  pain  both  in  itself  and  in  its  results,  as  when 
a  judge  '  takes  from  the  poor  to  give  to  the  rich,  or  bestows 
on  the  dissolute  the  labour  of  the  industrious ; '  but  we 
sympathise  with  the  general  satisfaction  resulting  to  society 
from  *  the  whole  scheme  of  law  and  justice,'  to  which  the 
act  in  question  belongs,  and  approve  it  accordingly.  The 
constancy  which  leads  to  a  dungeon  is  a  painiul  commodity 
to  its  possessor,  but  sympathy  with  his  pain  need  not 
incapacitate  a  spectator  for  that  other  sympathy  with  the 
general  pleasure  caused  by  such  a  character  to  others,  which 
constitutes  it  virtuous.  Again,  though  remote  situation  or 
the  state  of  one's  temper  may  at  any  time  modify  or 
suppress  sympathy  with  the  pleasure  caused  by  the  good 
qualities  of  any  particular  person,  we  may  still  apply  to  him 
terms  expressive  of  our  liking.  *  External  beauty  is  deter- 
mined merely  by  pleasure;  and  'tis  evident  a  beautiful 
countenance  cannot  give  so  much  pleasure,  when  seen  at  a 
distance  of  twenty  paces,  as  when  it  is  brought  nearer  to  us. 
We  say  not,  however,  that  it  appears  to  us  less  beautiful ; 
because  we  know  what  effect  it  will  have  in  such  a  position, 
and  by  that  reflection  we  correct  its  momentary  appear- 
ance.* As  with  the  beautiful,  so  with  the  morally  good. 
*  In  order  to  correct  the  continual  contradictions '  in  our 
judgment  of  it,  that  would  arise  from  changes  in  personal 
temper  or  situation,  ^  we  fix  on  some  steady  and  general 
points  of  view,  and  always  in  our  thoughts  place  ourselves 
in  them,  whatever  may  be  our  present  situation.'  Such  a 
point  of  view  is  furnished  by  the  consideration  of  'the 
interest  or  pleasure  of  the  person  himself  whose  character  is 
examined,  and  of  the  persons  who  have  a  connection  with 


'ARTIFICIAL  virtue;  869 

liim/  as  distinct  from  the  spectator's  own.  The  ima^ation 
in  time  learns  to  ^  adhere  to  these  general  views,  and  distin- 
guishes the  feelings  they  produce  from  those  which  arise 
from  our  particular  and  momentary  situation.'  Thus  a  certain 
constancy  is  introduced  into  sentiments  of  blame  and  praise, 
and  the  yariations,  to  which  they  continue  subject,  do  not 
appear  in  language,  which  ^experience  teaches  us  to 
correct,  even  where  our  sentiments  are  more  stubborn  and 
unalterable.'  * 

54.  It  thus  appears  that  though  the  virtue  of  an  act  means  In  order  to 
the  pleasure  which  it  causes  to  a  spectator,  and  though  this  ^^^^j' 
again  arises  from  sympathy  with  imagined  pleasure  of  the  has  to 
doer  or  others,  yet  the  former  may  be  a  pleasure  which  no  ^™Jhy 
particular  spectator  at  any  given  time  does  actually  feel —  withunfelt 
he  need  only  know  that  under  other  conditions  on  his  part  feelings. 
he  would  feel  it — and  the  latter  pleasure  may  be  one  either 

not  felt  at  all  by  any  existing  person,  or  only  felt  as  the 
opposite  of  the  uneasiness  with  which  society  witnesses  a 
departure  from  its  general  rules.  Of  the  essential  distinc- 
tion between  a  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain  and  a  knowledge 
of  the  conditions  under  which  a  pleasure  or  pain  is  generally 
felt,  Hume  shows  no  suspicion ;  nor,  while  he  admits  that 
without  substitution  of  the  knowledge  for  the  feeling  there 
could  be  no  general  standard  of  praise  or  blame,  does  he  ask 
himself  what  the  quest  for  such  a  standard  implies.  As  little 
does  he  trouble  himself  to  explain  how  there  can  be  such 
sympathy  with  an  unfelt  feeling — ^with  a  pleasure  which  no 
one  actually  feels  but  which  is  possible  for  posterity — as  will 
explain  our  approval  of  the  virtue  which  defies  the  world, 
and  which  is  only  assumed,  for  the  credit  of  a  theory,  to 
bring  pleasure  to  its  possessor,  because  it  certainly  brings 
pleasure  to  no  one  else.  For  the  *  artificial '  virtue,  how- 
ever, of  acts  done  in  conformity  with  the  *  general  scheme  of 
justice,'  or  other  social  conventions,  he  accounts  at  length  in 
part  II.  of  his  Second  Book — ^that  entitled  *0f  Justice  and 
Injustice.' 

55.  To  a  generation  which  has  sufficiently  freed  itself  Can  the 
from   all  *  mystical'  views  of  law— which  is  aware  that  ^t^"^^*"" 
*  natural  right,'  if  it  means  a  right  that  existed  in  a  ^  state  the 'moral' 
of  nature,'  is  a  contradiction  in  terms ;  that,  since  contracts  ^^ 

>  Boon  III.  Yol.  ii.  part  S,  sec.  1.    Specially  pp.  339,  342,  846,  349. 


360 


INTRODUCTION  II. 


•natural' 
be  main- 
tained by 
Home? 


What  is 
'  artificial 
virtue'? 


could  not  be  made^  or  pi-operty  exist  apart  from  social  con- 
Tention,  any  question  about  a  primitive  obligation  to  respect 
them  is  unmeaning — the  negative  side  of  this  part  of  the 
treatise  can  have  little  interest.  That  all  rights  and  obliga- 
tions are  in  some  sense  ^  artificial/  we  are  as  .much  agreed  as 
that  without  experience  there  can  be  no  knowledge.  The 
question  is,  how  the  artifice,  which  constitutes  them,  is  to  be 
understood,  and  what  are  its  conditions.  If  we  ask  what 
Hume  understood  by  it,  we  can  get  no  other  answer  than 
that  the  artificial  is  the  opposite  of  the  natural.  If  we  go 
on  to  ask  for  the  meaning  of  the  natural,  we  only  learn  that 
we  must  distinguish  the  senses  in  which  it  is  opposed  to  the 
miraculous  and  to  the  unusual  from  that  in  which  it  is 
opposed  to  the  artificial,^  but  not  what  the  latter  sense  is. 
The  truth  is  that,  if  the  first  book  of  Hume's  treatise  has 
fulfilled  its  purpose,  the  only  conception  of  the  natural, 
which  can  give  meaning  to  the  doctrine  that  the  obligation 
to  observe  contracts  and  respect  property  is  artificial,  must 
disappear.  There  are,  we  shall  find,  two  difiPerent  negations 
which  in  different  contexts  this  doctrine  conveys.  Some- 
times it  means  that  such  an  obligation  did  not  exist  for  man 
in  a  *  state  of  nature,'  t.e.,  as  man  was  to  begin  with.  But 
in  that  sense  the  law  of  cause  and  eflfect,  without  which 
there  would  be  no  nature  at  all,  is,  according  to  Hume,  not 
natural,  for  it — not  merely  our  recognition  of  it,  but  the 
law  itself — is  a  habit  of  imagination,  gradually  formed. 
Sometimes  it  conveys  an  opposition  to  Clarke's  doctrine  of 
obligation  as  constituted  by  certain  ^  eternal  relations  and 
proportions,'  which  also  form  the  order  of  nature,  and  are 
other  than,  though  regulative  of,  the  succession  of  our  feel- 
ings. Nature,  however,  having  been  reduced  by  Hume  to 
the  succession  of  our  feelings,  the  *  artifice,'  by  which  he 
supposes  obligations  to  be  formed,  cannot  be  determined  by 
opposition  to  it,  unless  the  operation  of  motives,  which  ex- 
plains the  artifice,  is  something  else  than  a  succession  of 
feelings.  But  that  it  is  nothing  else  is  just  what  it  is  one 
great  object  of  the  moral  part  of  his  treatise  to  show. 

56.  He  is  nowhere  more  happy  than  in  exposing  the 
fallacies  by  which  *  liberty  of  indiflferency ' — ^the  liberty  sup- 
posed to  consist  in  a  possibility  of  \mmotived  action — was 


>  Book  ii.  part  1,  iieo.  2. 


FREEDOM  AND  NECESSITY.  3(5! 

defended.'  Every  act,  he  shows,  is  determined  by  a  strongest  Norofsuch 
motive,  and  the  relation  between  motive  and  act  is  no  other  in*^iation 
than  that  between  any  canse  and  effect  in  nature.  In  one  and  act 
case,  as  in  the  other,  ^  necessity '  lies  not  in  an  ^  esse  '  but  in 
a  *  percipi.*  It  is  the  *  determination  of  the  thought  of  any 
intelligent  being,  who  considers '  an  act  or  event,  *  to  infer  its 
existence  from  some  preceding  objects ;  '•  and  such  deter- 
mination is  a  habit  formed  by,  and  having  a  strength  pro- 
portionate to,  the  frequency  with  which  certain  phenomena 
— actions  or  events — have  followed  certain  others.  The 
weakness  in  this  part  of  Hume's  doctrine  lies,  not  in  the 
assumption  of  an  equal  uniformity  in  the  sequence  of  act 
upon  motive  with  that  which  obtains  in  nature,  but  in  his 
inability  consistently  to  justify  the  assumption  of  an  absolute 
uniformity  in  either  case.  When  there  is  an  apparent 
irregularity  in  the  consequences  of  a  given  motive— when 
according  to  one  *  experiment  *  action  (a)  follows  upon  it, 
according  to  another  action  (6),  and  so  on — although  ^  these 
contrary  experiments  are  entirely  equal,  we  remove  not  the 
notion  of  causes  and  necessity ;  but,  supposing  that  the 
usual  contrariety  proceeds  from  the  operation  of  contrary 
and  concealed  causes,  we  conclude  that  the  chance  or  in- 
difference lies  only  in  our  judgment  on  account  of  our 
imperfect  knowledge,  not  in  the  things  themselves,  which  are 
in  every  case  equally  necessary,  though  to  appearance  not 
equally  constant  or  uniform.*'  But  we  have  already  seen 
that,  if  necessary  connection  were  in  truth  only  a  habit 
arising  from  the  frequency  with  which  certain  phenomena 
follow  certain  others,  the  cases  of  exception  to  a  usual 
sequence,  or  in  which  the  balance  of  chances  did  not  incline 
one  way  more  than  another,  could  only  so  far  weaken  the 
habit.  The  explanation  of  them  by  the  *  operation  of  con- 
cealed causes  *  implies,  as  he  here  says,  an  opposition  of  real 
necessity  to  apparent  inconstancy,  which,  if  necessity  were 
such  a  habit  as  he  says  it  is,  would  be  impossible.^  This 
difficulty,  however,  applying  equally  to  moral  and  natural 
sequences,  can  constitute  no  difference  between  them.  It 
cannot  therefore  be  in  the  relation  between  motive  and  act 
that  the  followers  of  Hume  can  find  any  ground  for  a  dis- 

*  Book  u.  part  3,  sees.  1  and  2.  *  Soe  Introduction  to  Vol.  i. 

<  Vol.  n.  p.  180.  323  and  336. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  186. 


362  INTRODUCTION  II. 

tinction  between  the  process  by  which  the  conyentions  of 
society  are  formed,  and  that  snccession  of  feelings  which  he 
calls  uatare.     May  he  then  find  it  in  the  character  of  the 
motive  itself  by  which  the  *  invention  *  of  justice  is  to  be 
accounted  for  P   Is  this  other  than  a  feeling  determined  by  a 
previous,  and  determining  a  sequent,  oneP    Not,  we  must 
answer,  as  Hume  himself  understood  his  own  account  of  it, 
which  is  as  follows : — 
HotJye  to        57.  He  will  examine,  he  says,  *  two  questions,  viz.,  con- 
M^iidal      ceming  the  manner  in  which   the    rules  of  justice    are 
established  by  the  artifice  of  men ;    and  concerning  the 
reasons  which  determine  us  to  attribute  to  the  observance  or 
neglect  of  these  rules  a  moral  beauty  and  deformity.'^     Of 
the  motives  which  he  recognises  (§  45)  it  is  clear  that  only 
two — *  benevolence  *  and  *  interest  * — can  be  thought  of  in 
this  connection,  and  a  little  reflection  suffices  to  show  that 
benevolence  cannot  account  for  the  artifice  in  question. 
Benevolence  with  Hume  means  either  sympathy  with  plea- 
sure— and  this  (though  Hume  could  forget  it  on  occasion  *) 
must  be  a  particular  pleasure  of  some  particular  person — or 
desire  for  tiie  pleasure  of  such  sympathy.    Even  if  a  benevo- 
lence may  be  admitted,  which  is  not  a  desire  for  pleasure  at 
all  but  an  impulse  to  please,  still  this  can  only  be  an  impulse 
to  please  some  particular  person,  and  the  only  effect  of 
thought  upon  it,  which  Hume  recognises,  is  not  to  v^iden 
its  object  but  to  render  it  '  interested.*'    *  There  is  no  such 
passion  in  human  minds  as  the  love  of  mankind,  merely  as 
such,  independent  of  personal  qualities,  of  services,  or  of 
relation  to  ourself.'  *     The  motive,  then,  to  the  institution 
of  rules  of  justice  cannot  be  found  in  general  benevolence.* 
As  little  can  it  be  found  in  private  benevolence,  for  the 
person  to  whom  I  am  obliged  to  be  just  may  be  an  object  of 
merited  hatred.    It  is  true  that,  *  though  it  be  rare  to  meet 
with  one  who  loves  any  single  person  better  than  himself, 
yet  'tis  as  rare  to  meet  with  one  in  whom  all  the  kind  affec- 
tions, taken  together,  do  not  overbalance  all  the  selfish ' ;  but 
they  are  affections  to  his  kinsfolk  and  acquaintance,  and  the 
generosity  which  they  prompt  will  constantly  conflict  with 
justice.'  *  Interest,'  then,  must  be  the  motive  we  are  in  quest 

■  Book  in.  part  2,  sec  2.  *  For  tlie  sense  in  which  Hume  did 

'  Gf.  sec  64.  admit  a  'general  beneTolenee»'  see  sec 

•  Of.  sees.  42,  43,  and  46.  41,  note. 

«  Vol  IL  p.  266.  '  Vol.  XL  pp.  266  and  260. 


INTERESTED  AND  MORAL  OBLIGATION.  363 

of.  Of  the  *  three  species  of  goods  which  wo  are  possessed 
of — ^the  satisfaction  of  our  minds,  the  advantages  of  our 
body,  and  the  enjoyment  of  such  possessions  as  we  have 
acquired  by  our  industry  and  good  fortune  * — the  last  only 
^  may  be  transferred  without  su£Pering  any  loss  or  alteration ; 
while  at  the  same  time  there  is  not  sufficient  quantity  of 
them  to  supply  every  one's  desires  and  necessities.**  Hence 
a  special  instability  in  their  possession.  Eeflection  on  the 
general  loss  caused  by  such  instability  leads  to  a  *  tacit  con- 
yention,  entered  into  by  all  the  members  of  a  society,  to 
abstain  from  each  other's  possessions ; '  and  thereupon  ^  im- 
mediately arise  the  ideas  of  justice  and  injustice ;  as  also 
those  of  property,  right,  and  obligation.'  It  is  not  to  be 
supposed,  however,  that  the  *  convention '  is  of  the  nature  of 
a  promise,  for  all  promises  presuppose  it.  ^It  is  only  a 
general  sense  of  common  interest ;  which  sense  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  society  express  to  one  another,  and  which  induces 
them  to  regulate  their  conduct  by  certain  rules ; '  and  this 
^  general  sense  of  common  interest,'  it  need  scarcely  be  said, 
is  every  man's  sense  of  his  own  interest,  as  in  fact  coincid- 
ing with  that  of  his  neighbours.  In  short,  *  'tis  only  from 
the  selfishness  and  confined  generosity  of  man,  along  with 
the  scanty  provision  nature  has  made  for  his  wants,  that 
justice  derives  its  origin.'* 

58.  Thus  the  origin  of  rules  of  justice  is  explained,  but  How 
the  obligation  to  observe    them    so  far  appears  only  as  »tifici«»l 

*  interested,'  not  as  *  moral.'     In  order  that  it  may  become  become 

*  moral,'  a  pleasure  must  be  generally  experienced  in  the  moral, 
spectacle  of  their  observance,  and  a  pain  in  that  of  their 
breact,  apart  from  reference  to  any  gain  or  loss  likely  to 
arise  to  the  spectator  himself  from  that  observance  or  breach. 

In  accounting  for  this  experience  Hume  answers  the  second 
of  the  questions,  proposed  above.  *  To  the  imposition  and 
observance  of  these  rules,  both  in  general  and  in  every 
particular  instance,  men  are  at  first  induced  only  by  a  regard 
to  interest;  and  this  motive,  on  the  first  formation  of 
society,  is  sufficiently  strong  and  forcible.  But  when  society 
has  become  numerous,  and  has  increased  to  a  tribe  or  nation, 
this  interest  is  more  remote ;  nor  do  men  so  readily  perceive 
that  disorder  and  confusion  follow  upon  each  breach  of  these 

>  Vol.  u.  pp.  261,  263,  268. 


864  INTRODUCTION  H. 

rules,  as  in  a  more  narrow  and  contracted  society.  But 
though,  in  our  own  actions,  we  may  frequ^^ntlj  lose  sight  of 
that  interest  which  we  have  in  maintaining  order,  and  may 
follow  a  lesser  and  more  present  interest,  we  never  fail  to 
observe  the  prejudice  we  receive,  either  mediately  or  im- 
mediately, from  the  injustice  of  others Nay,  when 

the  injiistice  is  so  distant  from  us,  as  no  way  to  affect  our 
interest,  it  still  displeases  us,  because  we  consider  it  as  pre- 
judicial to  human  society,  and  pernicious  to  every  one  that 
approaches  the  person  guilty  of  it.  We  partake  of  their 
uneasiness  by  syrnpathy  ;  and  as  everything  which  gives  un- 
easiness in  human  actions,  upon  the  general  survey,  is  called 
vice,  aud  whatever  produces  satisfaction,  in  the  same  manner, 
denominated  virtue,  this  is  the  reason  why  the  sense  of 
moral  good  and  evil  follows  upon  justice  and  injustice.  And 
though  this  sense,  in  the  present  case,  be  derived  only  from 
contemplating  the  actions  of  others,  yet  we  &il  not  to 
extend  it  even  to  our  own  actions.  The  gendered  rule  reaches 
beyond  those  instances  from  which  it  arose,  while  at  the 
same  time  we  naturally  sympathise  with  others  in  the  senti- 
ments they  entertain  of  us.*^ 
intereflt  ^^-  ^^  "^®  account  of  the  process  by  which  rules  of 

and  justice  have  not  only  come  into  being,  but  come  to  bind 

^u^for  ^^^  *  conscience  *  as  they  do,  the  modem  critic  will  be 
all  obliga-  prompt  to  object  that  it  is  still  affected  by  the  *  unhistorical  * 
and  moral  ^elusions  of  the  systems  against  which  it  was  directed.  In 
expression,  at  any  rate,  it  bears  the  marks  of  descent  from 
Hobbes,  and,  if  read  without  due  allowance,  might  convey 
the  notion  that  society  first  existed  without  any  sort  of 
justice,  and  that  afterwards  its  members,  finding  universal 
war  inconvenient,  said  to  themselves,  ^  Go  to ;  let  us  abstain 
from  each  other's  goods.*  It  would  be  hard,  however,  to 
expect  from  Hume  the  full-blown  terminology  of  develop- 
ment. He  would  probably  have  been  the  first  to  admit 
that  rules  of  justice,  as  well  as  our  feelings  towards  them, 
were  not  made  but  grew ;  and  in  his  view  of  the  *  passions,' 
whose  operation  this  growth  exhibits,  he  does  not  seriously 
differ  from  the  ordinary  exponents  of  the  *  natural  history  * 
of  ethics.  These  passions,  we  have  seen,  are  *  Interest  *  and 
*  Sympathy,'  which  with  Hume  only  differ  from  the  pleasures 

*  VoL  n.  p.  271. 


MEANING  OF  'OUGHT'  AND  'OUGHT  NOT.'  865 

and  desires  we  call  'animal'  as  any  one  of  these  differs 
from  another — the  pleasure  of  eating,  for  instance,  from  that 
of  drinking,  or  desire  for  the  former  pleasure  from  desire  for 
the  latter.  Nor  do  their  effects  in  the  regulation  of  society, 
and  in  the  growth  of  *  artificial '  virtues  and  vices,  differ 
according  to  his  account  of  them  from  sentiments  which, 
because  they  *  occur  to  us  whether  we  will  or  no,*  he  reckons 
purely  natural,  save  in  respect  of  the  further  extent  to 
which  the  modifying  influence  of  imagination — ^itself  reacted 
on  by  language — must  have  been  carried  in  order  to  their 
existence ;  and  since  this  in  his  view  is  a  merely  *  natural ' 
influence,  there  can  only  be  a  relative  difference  between  the 

*  artificiality '  of  its  more  complex,  and  the  '  naturalness '  of 
its  simpler,  products.  Locke's  opposition,  then,  of  *  moral ' 
to  other  good,  on  the  ground  that  other  than  natural  instru- 
mentality is  implied  in  its  attainment,  will  not  hold  even  in 
regard  to  that  good  which,  it  is  admitted,  would  not  be 
what  it  is,  i.e.,  not  a  pleasure,  but  for  the  intervention  of 
civil  law. 

60.  The    doctrine,  which    we    have    now    traversed,   of  what  is 

*  interested '  and  *  moral '  obligation,  implicitly  answers  the  ^^^'^jq J 
question  as  to  the  origin  and  significance  of  the  ethical  which 
copula  *  ought.'     It  originally  expresses,  we  must  suppose,  ^^^^ 
obligation  by  positive  law,  or  rather  by  that  authoritative 
custom  in  which  (as  Hume  would  probably  have  been  ready 

to  admit)  the  'general  sense  of  common  interest'  first 
embodies  itself.  In  this  primitive  meaning  it  already 
implies  an  opposition  between  the  *  interest  which  each  man 
has  in  maintaining  order '  and  his  '  lesser  and  more  present 
interests.'  Its  meaning  will  be  modified  in  proportion  as 
the  direct  interest  in  maintaining  order  is  reinforced  or 
superseded  by  sympathy  with  the  general  uneasiness  which 
any  departure  from  the  rules  of  justice  causes.  And  as  this 
uneasiness  is  not  confined  to  cases  where  the  law  is  directly 
or  in  the  letter  violated,  the  judgment,  that  an  act  (xught  to 
be  done,  not  only  need  not  imply  a  belief  that  the  person, 
so  judging,  will  himself  gain  anything  by  its  being  done  or 
lose  anything  by  its  omission ;  it  need  not  imply  that  any 
positive  law  requires  it.  Whether  it  is  applicable  to  every 
act  *  causing  pleasure  on  the  mere  survey ' — whether  the 
range  of  *  imperfect  obligation '  is  as  wide  as  that  of  moral 
sentiment — Hume  does  not  make  clear.     That  every  action 


366  INTRODUCTION  H. 

representing  a  quality  ^  fitted  to  give  immediate  pleasmie  to 
its  possessor '  should  be  virtuous — ^as  according  to  Hume's 
account  of  the  exciting  cause  of  moral  sentiment  it  must  be-— 
seems  strauge  enough,  but  it  would  be  stranger  that  we 
should  judge  of  it  as  an  act  which  (xught  to  be  done.     It  is 
less  difficulty  for  instance,  to  suppose  that  it  is  yirtuous  to 
be  witty,  than  that  one  ought  to  be  so.     Perhaps  it  would 
be  open  to  a  disciple  of  Hume  to  hold  that  as,  according  to 
his  master's  showing,  an  opposition  between  permanent  and 
present  interest  is  implied  in  the  judgment  of  obligation  as 
at  first  formed,  so  it  is  when  the  pleasure  to  be  produced  by 
an  act,  which  gratifies  moral  sense,  is  remote  rather  than 
near,  and  a  pleasure  to  others  rather  than  to  the  doer,  that 
the  term  *  ought '  is  appropriate  to  it. 
Sense  of         ^^'  ^^^  though  Hume  leaves  some  doubt  on  this  point, 
morality     he  leaves  none  in  regard  to  the  sense  in  which  alone  any  one 
no  motiTo.  ^^^  Y)Q  gaid  to  do  an  action  because  he  ought.    This  must 
mean  that  he  does  it  to  avoid  either  a  l^al  penalty  or  that 
pain  of  shame  which  would  arise  upon  the  communication 
through  sympathy  of  such   uneasiness   as  a  contrary  act 
would  excite  in  others  upon  the  survey.     So  far  from  its 
being  true  that  an  act,  in  order  to  be  thoroughly  virtuous, 
must  be  done  for  virtue's  sake,  ^  no  action  can  be  virtuous 
or  morally  good  uidess  there  is  some  motive  to  produce  it, 
distinct  from  the  sense  of  its  morality.'  ^    An  act  is  virtuous 
on  account  of  the  pleasure  which  supervenes  when  it  is 
contemplated  as  proceeding  from  a  motive  fitted  to  produce 
pleasure  to  the  agent  or  to  others.    The  presence  of  this 
motive,  then,  being  the  antecedent  condition  of  the  act's 
being  regarded  as  virtuous,  the  motive  cannot  itself  have 
been  a  regard  to  the  virtue.    It  may  be  replied,  indeed, 
that  though  this  shows   *  regard  to  virtue '  or  *  sense  of 
morality '  to  be  not  the  primary  or  only  virtuous  motive,  it 
does  not  follow  that  it  cannot  be  a  motive  at  all.     An  action 
cannot  be  prompted  for  the  first  time  by  desire  for  a  pleasure 
which  can  only  be  felt  as  a  consequence  of  the  action  having 
been  done,  but  it  may  be  repeated,  after  experience  of  this 
pleasure,  from  desire  for  its  renewal.     In  like  manner,  smce 
with  Hume  the  ^  sense  of  morality '  is  not  a  desire  at  all 
but  an  emotion,  and  an  emotion  which  cannot  be  felt  till  an 

»  Vol.  n.,  p.  258. 


VIRTUE  FOR  VIRTUE'S  SAKE.  367 

act  of  a  certain  kind' has  been  done,  it  cannot  be  the  origisai  ^niea  it 
motive  to  snch  an  action ;  but  why  may  not  desire  for  so  •oema  so, 
pleasant  an  emotion,  when  once  it  has  been  experienced,  jg^^aHy^ 
lead  to  a  repetition  of  the  act  9  The  answer  to  this  question  pride. 
is  that  the  pleasure  of  moral  sentiment,  as  Hume  thinks  of 
it,  is  essentially  a  pleasure  experienced  by  a  spectator  of  an 
act  who  is  other  than  the  doer  of  it.  If  the  doer  and 
spectator  were  regarded  as  one  person,  there  would  be  no 
meaning  in  the  rule  that  the  tendency  to  produce  pleasure, 
which  excites  the  sentiment  of  approbation,  must  be  a 
tendency  to  produce  it  to  the  doer  himself  or  others,  as 
distinct  from  the  spectator  himself.  Thus  pleasure,  in  the 
specific  form  in  which  Hume  would  call  it  'moral  senti- 
ment,' is  not  what  any  one  could  attain  by  his  own  action, 
And  consequently  cannot  be  a  motive  to  action.  Transferred 
by  sympathy  to  the  consciousness  of  the  man  whose  act  is 
approved,  *  moral  sentiment '  becomes  '  pride,'  and  desire  for 
the  pleasure  of  pride — otherwise  called  *  love  of  fame ' — is 
one  of  the  '  virtuous '  motives  on  which  Hume  dwells  most. 
VHien  an  action,  however,  is  done  for  the  sake  of  any  such 
positive  pleasure,  he  would  not  allow  apparentiy  that  the 
agent  does  it  *  from  a  sense  of  duty '  or  *  because  he  ought.* 
He  would  confine  this  description  to  cases  where  the  object 
was  rather  the  avoidance  of  humiliation.  '  I  ought '  means 
*it  is  expected  of  me.'  *When  any  virtuous  motive  or 
principle  is  common  in  human  nature,  a  person  who  feels 
his  heart  devoid  of  that  motive  may  hate  himself'  (strictiy, 
according  to  Hume's  usage  of  terms,  *  despise  himself')  '  on 
that  account,  and  may  perform  the  action  without  the  motive 
from  a  certain  sense  of  duty,  in  order  to  acquire  by  practice 
that  virtuous  principle,  or  at  least  to  disguise  to  himself  as 
much  as  possible  his  want  of  it.'  * 

62.  What  difference,  then,  we  have  finally  to  ask,  does  between 
Hume  leave  between  one  motive  and  another,  which  can  virtuoua 
give  any  significance  to  the  assertion  that  an  act,  to  be  mot^e^^^ 
virtuous,  must  proceed  from  a  virtuous  motive  P     When  a  does  not 
writer  has  so  far  distinguished  between  motive  and  action  as  !J^n'^' 
to  tell  us  that  the  moral  value  of  an  action  depends  on  its  mored. 
motive — ^which  is  what  Hume  is  on  occasion  ready  to  tell 
us — ^we  naturally  suppose  that  any  predicate,  which  he  pro- 

'  Vol.  n.,  p.  268. 


868  INTRODUCTION   11. 

ceeds  to  apply  to  the  motive,  is  meant  to  represent  what  it 
is  in  relation  to  the  subject  of  it.  It  cannot  be  so,  however, 
when  Hume  calls  a  motive  virtuous.  This  predicate,  as  he 
explains,  refers  not  to  an  *  esse '  but  to  a  *  percipi ;  *  which 
means  that  it  does  not  represent  what  the  motive  is  to  the 
person  whom  it  moves,  but  a  pleasant  feeling  excited  in  the 
spectator  of  the  act.  To  the  excitement  of  this  feeling  it 
is  necessary  that  the  action  should  not  merely  from  some 
temporary  combination  of  circumstances  produce  pleasure 
for  that  time  and  turn,  but  that  the  desire,  to  which  the 
spectator  ascribes  it,  should  be  one  according  to  his  expecta- 
tion '  fitted  to  produce  pleasure  to  the  agent  or  to  others.' 
In  this  sense  only  can  Hume  consistently  mean  that  virtue 
in  the  motive  is  tiie  condition  of  virtue  in  the  act,  and  in  this 
sense  the  qualification  has  not  much  significaj^ce  for  the 
spectator  of  the  act,  and  none  at  aU  in  relation  to  the  doer. 
It  has  not  much  for  the  spectator,  because,  according  to  it, 
no  supposed  desire  will  excite  his  displeasure  an^i  conse- 
quently be  vicious  unless  in  its  general  operation  it  produces 
a  distinct  overbalance  of  pain  to  the  subject  of  it  and  to 
others  ;  ^  and  by  this  test  it  would  be  more  difficult  to  show 
that  an  unseasonable  passion  for  reforming  mankind  was  not 
vicious  than  that  moderate  lechery  was  so.  It  has  no 
significance  at  all  for  the  person  to  whom  vice  or  virtue  is 
imputed,  because  a  difference  in  the  results,  which  others 
anticipate  from  any  desire  that  moves  him  to  action,  makes 
no  difference  in  that  desire,  as  he  feels  and  is  moved  by  it. 
To  him,  according  to  Hume,  it  is  simply  desire  for  the 
pleasure  of  which  the  idea  is  for  the  time  most  lively,  and, 
being  most  lively,  cannot  but  excite  the  strongest  desire.  In 
this — in  the  character  which  they  severally  bear  for  the 
subjects  of  them — the  virtuous  motive  and  the  vicious  are 
alike.  Hume,  it  is  true,  allows  that  the  subject  of  a  vicious 
desire  may  become  conscious  through  sympathy  of  the 
uneasiness  which  the  contemplation  of  it  causes  to  others, 
but  if  this  sympathy  were  strong  enough  to  neutralize  the 

*  I  -write  '  AND  to  others/  not  *  ob,'  pain  both  to  the  doer  and  to  others.  If, 
because  according  to  Hume  the  produc-  though  tending  to  bring  pain  to  others, 
tion  of  pleasure  to  the  agent  alone  is  it  had  a  contrary  tendency  for  the  agent 
enough  to  render  an  action  virtuous,  if  himself,  there  would  be  nothing  to  de- 
it  proceeds  from  some  permanent  quality.  cide  whether  the  viciousness  of  the  for- 
Thus  an  action  could  not  be  unmistak-  mer  tendency  was,  or  was  not,  balanced 
ably  vicious  unless  it  tended  to  produce  by  the  virtuousness  of  the  latter. 


IF  NO  ONE  DISPLEASED,  NO  VICE.  869 

imagination  which  excites  the  desire,  the  desire  would  not 
move  him  to  act.  That  predominance  of  anticipated  pain 
over  pleasure  in  the  effects  of  a  motive,  which  renders  it 
vicious  to  the  spectator,  cannot  be  transferred  to  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  subject  of  it  without  making  it  cease  to  be  his 
motive  because  no  longer  his  strongest  desire.  A  vicious 
motive,  in  short,  would  be  a  coil^tradiction  in  terms,  if  that 
productivity  of  pain,  which  belongs  to  the  motive  in  the 
imagination  of  the  spectator,  belonged  to  it  also  in  the 
imagination  of  the  agent. 

63.  Thus  the  consequence,  which  we  found  to  be  involved  *  Ooa 

in  Locke's  doctrine  of  motives,  is  virtually  admitted  by  its  "f  j^^^^u 
most  logical  exponent.  Locke's  confusions  began  when  he  appears, 
tried  to  reconcile  his  doctrine  with  the  fact  of  self-con- 
demnation, with  the  individual's  consciousness  of  vice  as  a 
condition  of  himself;  or,  in  his  own  words,  to  explain  how 
the  vicious  man  could  be  *  answerable  to  himself  for  his 
vice.  Consciousness  of  vice  could  only  mean  consciousness 
of  pleasure  wilfully  foregone,  and  since  pleasure  could  not  be 
wilfully  foregone,  there  could  be  no  such  consciousness. 
Hume,  as  we  have  seen,  cuts  the  knot  by  disposing  of  the 
consciousness  of  vice,  as  a  relation  in  which  the  individual 
stands  to  himself,  altogether.  A  man's  vice  is  someone  else's 
displeasure  with  him,  and,  if  we  wish  to  be  precise,  we  must 
not  speak  of  self-condemnation  or  desire  for  excellence  as 
influencing  human  conduct,  but  of  aversion  from  the  pain 
of  humiliation  and  desire  for  the  pleasure  of  pride — ^humilia- 
tion and  pride  of  that  sort  of  which  each  man's  sympathy 
with  the  feeling  of  others  about  him  is  the  condition. 

64.  That  such  a  doctrine  leaves   large  fields  of  human  Onlyie- 
experience   unexplained,    few  will  now   dispute.     Wesley,  JJ^i]^^. 
Wordsworth,  Pichte,  Mazzini,  and  the  German  theologians,  maina. 
lie  between  us  and  the  generation  in  which,  to  so  healthy  a 
nature  as  Hume's,  and  in  so  explicit  a  form,  it  could  be 
possible.     Enthusiasm — religious,  political,  and  poetic — if  it 

has  not  attained  higher  forms,  has  been  forced  to  understand 
itself  better  since  the  time  when  Shaftesbury's  thin  and 
stilted  rhapsody  was  its  most  intelligent  expression.  It  is 
now  generally  agreed  that  the  saint  is  not  explained  by 
being  called  a  fanatic,,  that  there  is  a  patriotism  which  is 
not  ^  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel,'  and  that  we  know  no 
more  about  the  poet,  when  we  have  been  told  that  he  seeks 

VOL.  I.  B  B 


370  INTRODUCTION   11. 

the  beautiful,  and  that  what  is  beautiful  is  pleasant,  than  we 
did  before.  This  admitted,  Hume's  Hedonism  needs  only  to 
be  clearly  stated  to  be  found  *  unsatisfactory.*  K  it  ever 
tends  to  find  acceptance  with  serious  people,  it  is  through 
confusion  with  that  hybrid,  though  beneficent,  utilitarianism 
which  finds  the  moral  good  in  the  *  greatest  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number  *  without  reflecting  that  desire  for  such  an 
object,  not  being  for  a  feeling  of  pleasure  to  be  experienced 
by  the  subject  of  the  desire,  is  with  Hume  impossible.  Un- 
deretood  as  he  himself  understood  his  doctrine,  it  is  only 
*  respectability  * — ^the  temper  of  the  man  who  *  naturally,' 
t.e.,  without  definite  expectation  of  ulterior  gain,  seeks  to 
stand  well  with  hia  neighbours — ^that  it  will  explain ;  and 
this,  it  can  only  treat  as  a  fixed  quantity.  Taking  for 
granted  the  heroic  virtue,  for  which  it  cannot  account,  it 
still  must  leave  it  a  mystery  how  the  heroic  virtue  of  an 
earlier  age  can  become  the  respectability  of  a  later  one. 
Becent  literary  fashion  has  led  us  perhaps  unduly  to 
depreciate  respectability,  but  the  avowed  insufficiency  of  a 
moral  theory  to  explain  anything  beyond  it  may  fairly 
entitle  us  to  enquire  whether  it  can  consistently  explain 
even  that.  The  reason,  as  we  have  sufficiently  seen,  why 
Hume's  ethical  speculation  has  such  an  issue  is  that  he  does 
not  recognize  the  constitutive  action  of  self-conscious 
thought.  Misunilerstanding  our  passivity  in  experience — 
unaware  that  it  has  no  meaning  except  in  relation  to  an 
object  which  thought  itself  projects,  yet  too  clear-sighted 
to  acquiesce  in  the  vulgar  notion  of  either  laws  of  matter  or 
laws  of  action,  as  simply  thrust  upon  us  from  an  unaccount* 
able  without — he  seeks  in  the  mere  abstraction  Of  passivity, 
of  feeling  which  is  a  feeling  of  nothing,  the  explanation  of 
And  even  the  natural  and  moral  world.  Nature  is  a  sequence  of 
conais-  seusations,  morality  a  succession  of  pleasures  and  pains. 
tentiyoc-  It  is  uudcr  the  pressure  of  this  abstraction  that  he  so 
cpunted  empties  morality  of  its  actual  content  as  to  leave  only  the 
residuum  we  have  described.  Tet  to  account  even  for  this 
he  has  to  admit  such  motives  as  ^  pride,'  *  love,'  and  *  interest ;' 
and  each  of  these,  as  we  have  shown,  implies  that  very 
constitutive  action  of  reason,  by  ignoring  which  he  compels 
himself  to  reduce  all  morality  to  that  of  the  average  man  in 
his  least  exalted  moments.  ^Plie  formative  power  of  thought, 
as  exhibited  in  such  motives  only  differs  in  respect  of  the 


HUME  TERMINATES  AN  EPOCH.  871 

lower  degfree,  to  which  it  has  fashioned  its  matter,  from  the 
same  power  as  the  source  of  the  ^  desire  for  excellence/  of 
the  will  antonomons  in  the  service  of  mankind,  of  the  for- 
ever (to  ns)  unfilled  ideal  of  a  perfect  society.  It  is  because 
Hume  de-rationalizes  respectability,  that  he  can  find  no 
rationale^  and  therefore  no  room,  for  the  higher  morality. 
This  might  warn  ns  that  an  '  ideal '  theory  of  ethics  tampers 
with  its  only  sure  foundation  when  it  depreciates  respecta- 
bility; and  if  it  were  our  business  to  extract  a  practi- 
cal lesson  from  him,  it  would  be  that  there  is  no  other  genuine 
*  enthusiasm  of  humanity '  than  one  which  has  travelled  the 
common  highway  of  reason — the  life  of  the  good  neighbour 
and  honest  citizen — and  can  never  forget  that  it  is  still  only 
ou  a  further  stage  of  the  same  journey.  Our  business,  how- 
ever, has  not  been  to  moralise,  but  to  show  that  the  philoso- 
phy based  on  the  abstraction  of  feeling,  in  regard  to  morals 
no  less  than  to  nature,  was  with  Hume  played  out,  and  that 
the  next  step  forward  in  speculation  could  only  be  an  effort  to 
re-think  the  process  of  nature  and  human  action  from  its  true 
beginning  in  thought.  If  this  object  has  been  in  any  way 
attained,  so  that  the  attention  of  Englishmen  ^  under  five- 
and-twenty '  may  be  diverted  from  the  anachronistic  systems 
hitherto  prevalent  among  us  to  the  study  of  Zant  and 
Hegel,  an  irksome  labour  will  not  have  been  in  vain. 


B  R  2 


MR.  HEEBERTSPENCER  AND  MR.G.tt  LEWES: 

TMEIB    APPLICATION    OF    THE    DOCTRINE    OF 
EVOLUTION  TO   THOUGHT. 


PART  I. 

MB.  SPENOES  ON  THE  BELATION  OF  SUBJECT  AKD  OBJEOT. 

1.  At  the  conclusion  of  an  inquiry,  recently  published,  into  Current 
the  course  and  result  of  that  philosophical  movement  which  ^g°^J^J 
is  represented  by  the  names  of  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Hume,  I  logy 
ventured  to  speak  of  the  systems  of  philosophy,  which  since  '»°^»the 
their  time  have  found  favour  in  England,  as  anachronistic,  sical  ques- 
and  to  point  by  way  of  contrast  to  Kant  and  Hegel,  as  tion  rnised 
representing  a  real  advance  in  metaphysical  inquiry.    Among 
many  of  the  few  persons  who  attended  to  it,  such  language 
naturally  excited  surprise  or  ofiPence.     With  those  who  look 
to   *  mental  philosophy*   for  discoveries   corresponding  to 
those  of  the  physical  sciences,  the  German  writers  referred  to 
have  become  almost  a  by-word  for  unprofitableness,  while 
the  *  empirical  psychology  *  of  our  own  country  has  been 
ever  showing  more  of  the  self-confidence,  and  winning  more 
of  the  applause,  which  belong  to  advancing  conquest.    It  had 
seemed  to  me,  indeed,  that  a  clear  exposition,  such  as  I 
sought  to  furnish,  of  the  state  of  the  question  in  metaphy- 
sics, as  Hume  left  it,  would  sufiice  to  show  that  it  has  not 
been  met  but  ignored  by  his  English  followers.     A  fuller  con- 
sideration, however,  might  have  taught  me  that  each  gene- 
ration requires  the  questions  of  philosophy  to  be  put  to  it  in 
its  own  language,  and,  unless  they  are  so  put,  will  not  be  at 
the  pains  to  understand  them.     An  historical  treatment  of 
them,  indeed,  is  challenged  alike  by  the  loud  pretension  of 
contemporary  metaphysie  (whether  so  called  or  not),  and  by  its 
complacent  disregard  of  the  metaphysie  of  the  past;   but, 
when  offered,  though  it  may  be  commended,  it  does  not 


874  MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

persuade.     The  current  theories  about  soul  and  mind  have 
got  too  far  apart  from,  if  not  ahead  of,  the  question  which 
Hume  (in  eflFect)  raised  and  Kant  took  up,  to  be  brought 
back  to  it  by  any  inquiry  into  the  antecedents  which  rendered 
it  inevitable,  or  by  any  exposition  of  the  logical  obligations 
which  it  imposed  on  the  next  generation^,  but  which  English 
psychology  has  hitherto  failed  to  recognise.      Only  by  a 
direct  examination  of  that  psychology  itself,  as  represented 
by  our  ablest  writers,  can  we  expect  to  produce  the  convic- 
tion that  this  primary  question  of  metaphysics  still  lies  at  its 
threshold,  and  is  finding  nothing  but  a  tautological  or  pre- 
posterous answer. 
The  ques-        2.  What  is  that  question  9  It  cannot  really  be  better  stated 
HowiT*     ^^^^  i^  ^^®  formula  of  the  schools,  ^How  is  knowledge 
knowledge  possible  P '     Let  the  reader  withhold  for  a  few  moments  the 
^Nwessfty    derision  which  this  statement  may  possibly  provoke.     It  is 
for  asking   not  to  be  coufrised  with  a  question  upon  which  metaphy- 
^^  sicians  are   sometimes   supposed  to  waste  their  time — *Is 

knowledge  possible?'  We  are  not  inviting  any  one  to 
inquire  whether  he  can  do  that  which  he  constantly  is  doing, 
and  must  do  in  the  very  act  of  ascertaining  whether  he  can 
do  it.  Metaphysic  is  no  such  superfluous  labour.  It  is  no 
more  superfluous,  indeed,  than  is  any  theory  of  a  process 
which  without  the  theory  we  already  perform.  It  is 
simply  the  consideration  of  what  is  implied  in  the  fact 
of  our  knowing  or  coming  to  know  a  world,  or,  conversely, 
in  the  fact  of  there  being  a  world  for  us  to  know.  Why  such 
a  consideration  should  occupy  the  mind  of  man  at  aU,  is  a 
question  which  comes  strangely  from  a  generation  which 
has  been  taught  by  Positive  Philosophy  that  the  only  reason 
why  for  anything  is  a  sufliciently  general  and  uniform  thut. 
At  any  rate,  it  is  a  question  which  may  for  the  present  be 
postponed.  That  the  mind  of  man  is  inevitably  so  occupied, 
even  unto  weariness  and  vexation,  whenever  it  has  won  suffi- 
cient shelter  from  the  pressure  of  animal  want,  is  what 
popularised  materialism,  no  less  than  histories  of  philosophy, 
may  be  taken  to  show.  How,  indeed,  should  it  be  other- 
wise ?  How  should  that  busy  and  boundless  intellect,  which 
is  evermore  accounting  for  things  in  detail  on  supposition  of 
their  relation  to  each  other,  avoid  giving  an  account  to  itself 
of  the  system  which  renders  it  possible  for  them  thus  to  be 
accounted  for ;  in  other  words,  of  the  process  in  virtue  of 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  876 

which  it  is  intelligent  and  they  are  intelligible  P  But  though 
it  must  needs  render  such  an  account,  there  is  room  for 
much  variety  in  the  degree  of  clearness  with  which  it  under- 
stands what  it  is  about  in  doing  so.  It  is  not  really  the  case 
that  one  age,  or  one  set  of  thinkers  and  writers,  is  meta- 
physical, another  not,  though  one  may  addict  itself  to 
methods  of  inquiry  obscurely  called  *  transcendental,'  another 
to  such  as  are  experimental  and  ^  comparative.'  It  requires 
little  subtlety  to  read  metaphysics  between  the  lines  of  the 
Positive  Philosophy.  The  difference  lies  between  the  meta- 
physic  which  recognises  itself  as  such,  and  that  which  does 
not ;  between  the  metaphysic  which,  because  it  understands 
the  distinctive  nature  of  its  problem,  does  not  seek  the  solu- 
tion of  it  from  the  sciences  which  themselves  form  the 
problem  to  be  solved,  and  that  which,  unaware  of  its  own 
office  though  unable  to  discard  it,  interpolates  itself  into  the 
sciences  and  then  extracts  from  them,  under  the  guise  of  a 
scientific  theory  of  mental  phenomena,  what  are  after  all 
but  the  first  thoughts  of  metaphysic  clothing  themselves  in  a 
new  set  of  mechanical  or  physiological  metaphors. 

8.  Our  grievance,  then,  against  contemporary  philosophy  is.  Current 
that  whereas  the  movement  of  speculation,  which  issued  in  5^^^  ^^ 
Hume's  Treatise,  had  for  one  who,  like  Kant,  could  read  it  really  die- 
aright  the  effect  of  putting  the  metaphysical  problem  in  its  !|hjBic8*^" 
true  and  distinctive  form,  to  our  countrymen  it  has  never 
been  so  put  at  all ;  and  that  thus  we  have  never  taken  what 
is  the  first  step,  though  only  the  first,  to  its  solution.  This 
merely  means,  it  may  be  said,  that  we  have  been  wise 
enough  to  drop  metaphysics  betimes  and  occupy  ourselves 
with  psychology.  If  psychology  could  avoid  being  a  theory 
of  knowledge,  or  if  a  theory  of  knowledge  were  possible 
without  a  theory  of  the  thing  known,  the  reply  might  be 
effective ;  but  since  this  cannot  be,  it  merely  me^ns  that  it 
is  unaware  of  the  assumptions  which  it  uncritically  makes 
in  order  to  its  own  justification.  It  is  not  really,  nor  can 
be,  the  case  that  our  psychology  has  cleared  itself  of  meta- 
physics, but  that,  being  metaphysical  still,  it  is  so  with  the 
metaphysics  of  a  pre-Eantian  or  even  of  a  pre-Berkeleian 
age.  In  that  region  where  it  is  truly  independent  of  meta- 
physical questions,  and  which  may  roughly  be  described  as 
the  border-land  between  it  and  physiology,  it  has  doubt- 
less gained  much  ground  which  can  never  again  be  lost,  but 


376  MR.    SPENCER   ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

this  region,  as  we  hope  to  show,  has  definite  limitB.  Beyond 
them  the  alliance  with  physiology,  so  nsefbl  within  them, 
becomes  simply  illnsive.  It  has  merely  seired  to  give  a 
semblance  of  scientific  authority  to  what  is  in  fact  a  cmdely 
metaphysical  answer  to  questions  on  which,  rightly  under- 
stood, physiology  has  nothing  to  say,  but  which  it  is  apt 
to  fancy  that  it  is  answering  when  it  is  merely  repeating 
under  an  altered  terminology  the  see-saw  metaphysics  of 
Locke — of  Locke  in  his  first  mind,  as  represented  by  the 
second  book  of  his  Essay. 
Meamnffof  ^'  ^^  ^^®  already  adopted,  as  the  best  preliminary  state- 
the  qiicf-  ment  of  the  question  which  Hume  bequeathed  to  such  of  his 
Ukn^rt^  successors  as  could  read  him  aright,  the  formula,  *  How  is 
ledge pcMk  knowledge  possible?'  This  formula,  however,  like  every 
"^^^  other  of  the  kind,  derives  its  meaning  from  the  intellectual 
process  of  which  it  represents  the  result — ^a  process  preserved 
for  us  in  the  history  of  philosophy,  and  which  the  reader 
must  in  some  simple  and  summary  manner  repeat  for  him- 
self if  the  phrase  is  to  be  significant  for  him.  When  first 
presented  to  him,  it  will  probably  excite  such  reflections  as 
the  following: — ^This  seems  to  be  an  uncouth  way  of 
asking  how  I  and  other  men  have  come  by  the  knowledge 
we  possess.  The  answer  is  that  we  have  been  taught  most 
of  it,  but  that  ultimately,  as  our  best  psychologists  teach,  it 
results  from  the  production  of  feeling  in  us  by  the  external 
world  and  the  registration  of  feeling  in  experience.*  To 
those  acquainted  only  with  the  conventional  '  transcenden- 
talist '  whose  views,  undisturbed  by  their  own  rules  of  verifi- 
cation, Mr.  Mill  and  Mr.  Spencer  develop  with  such  easy 
generality  out  of  their  own  consciousness — the  lay -figure 
which  they  set  up  to  knock  down-^it  may  seem  strange  to 
be  told  that  no  disciple  of  Kant  or  Hegel,  who  knows  what 
he  is  about,  would  dispute  the  truth  of  the  above  answer, 
but  only  its  sufficiency.  The  fact  that  there  is  a  real  ex- 
ternal world  of  which  through  feeling  we  have  a  determinate 
experience,  and  that  in  this  experience  all  our  knowledge  of 
nature  is  implicit,  is  one  which  no  philosophy  disputes.  The 
idealist  merely  asks  for  a  further  analysis  of  a  fact  which  he 
finds  so  far  from  simple.  It  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  tell 
him  that  consciousness  is  a  simple  ultimate  fact.  Know- 
ledge is  quite  other  than  mere  consciousness,  and,  being  so, 
admits  of  and  requires  explanation.     The  fact  just  stated  is 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  877 

not  an  explanation  of  it,  but  a  summary  of  what  requires 
explanation.  It  either  merely  amounts  to  the  fact  that  we 
know  because  something  makes  us  know — which  we  may 
leave  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  logicians  who  are  so  fond  of 
the  story  of  the  opium  and  its  vis  dormitiva — or  is  only  more 
than  this  because  the  ^  something '  is  determined  as  a 
*  world/  as  *  real/  and  as  *  external,'  and  as  in  some  way 
reflecting  itself  in  our  experience. 

6.  It  is  the  analysis  of  these  further  determinations  and  of  Itconeerna 
all  whichy  the  imply  that  is  the  proper  task  of  the  metaphy-  of  tno^* 
sician.     He  is  the  inheritor  of  Plato's  Dialectic,  and  has  to  ledge,  and 
give  an  account  of  the  hypotheses  which  the  sciences  assume.  ^"^^^ 
The  question  before  him  is  thus  one  relating  to  the  object  of  before  the 
knowledge — What  are  the  conditions  implied  in  the  exist-  "JJ^g^^ 
ence  of  such  an  object?    and  an  answer  to  this  question  beiaresti- 
forms  the  necessary  prolegomenon  to  all  valid  psychology.  ^^^ 
Till  it  has  been  fairly  dealt  with,  an  inquiry  into  the  subjec- 
tive  process  through  which   the   individual  comes   by  his 
knowledge  can  have  only  an  illusive  result,  for  it  will  be 
assuming  an  answer  to  a  question  of  which  the  bearings 
have  not  been  considered,  and  will  therefore  be  at  the  mercy 
of  crude  metaphor  and  analogy  in  its  assumption.     It  is 
this  question  which  it  is  Eant's  great  merit  to  have  clearly 
raised,  and  which  he  fixed  in  the  formula,  ^  How  is  nature 
possible  ?  *    The  process  by  which  it  vras  forced  upon  him  was 
one  which  it  took  philosophy  some  generations  to  traverse, 
but  which  an  English  reader  who  will  acquaint  himself  with 
a  few  classical  writers  of  his  own  country  may  readily  ap- 
prehend.    The  object  matter  of  all  philosophy,  physical  or 
metaphysical,  had  been  fixed  by  Locke  once  for  all  as  in 
some   sort  consciousness.     Whatever  could   be  known  or 
spoken  of,  in  the  Newtonian  physics  no  less  than  in  his  own 
field  of  inquiry,  was  for  him  an  *  idea,'  or  some  order  of  combi- 
nation of  *  ideas.'  The  equivalent  phrase  that  all  *  knowledge 
is  of   phenomena'  has  become    an   accepted  commonplace 
of  the  modem  enlightenment.     Like  every  commonplace,  it 
is  of  value  or  otherwise  according  as,  to  those  by  whom  it  is 
used,  it  is  or  is  not  more  than  a  phrase.     To  enter  into  its 
meaning  is  the  true  baptism  into  philosophy,  but  a  polemic 
against  *  ontologists  '  who  are  supposed  to  dispute  it  is  no 
proof  that  the  baptism  has  been  effectually  undergone.     If 
from  the  proposition,  which  all  admit,  that  knowledge  is  of 


378  MB.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

appearances,  we  go  on  to  inquire  into  the  nature  of  appear- 
ances, we  find  the  natural  man  surviving  in  an  explanation 
of  them  which  neutralises  the  admission  that  they  are  ap- 
pearances, or  that  they  are  relative  to  consciousness  at  all. 
They  are  explained  as  molecular  changes  of  a  nervous 
organism.  Beginning  with  a  doctrine  which,  if  it  means 
anything,  means  that  only  as  an  element  in  a  world  of  con- 
sciousness can  any  material  relation  be  known,  we  are  asked 
to  explain  consciousness  itself  as  one  sort  of  such  material 
relation ;  which  is  as  if  a  physiologist  should  explain  the  vital 
process  by  some  particular  motion  of  a  muscle  which  it 
renders  possible, 
liocke's.  6.  In  Locke  himself,  the  determination  of  the  object  of 

teiT)pete-'*"  knowledge  as  lying  in  ideas  is  virtually  cancelled  on  almost 
tion  of  the  every  page  where  it  occurs.  Ideas  are  the  object  of  the  mind 
that  know-  ^^  kuowing,  but  ideas,  again,  are  of  something,  and  on  their 
ledge  is  of  relation  to  this  the  nature  of  the  ideas  depends.  What  is  it? 
'ideas.  fji^^  accounts  of  it  perpetually  cross  each  other  in  Locke,  as 
in  the  philosophy  of  the  present  day,  which  reproduces  him 
without  knowing  it.  Sometimes  it  is  presented  as  the  mere 
negation  of  the  ideas  which  yet  are  supposed  to  derive  their 
reality,  truth,  and  adequacy  from  relation  to  it ;  sometimes, 
although  supposed  to  be  something  else  than  ideas,  it  turns 
out,  when  some  verbal  disguises  have  been  removed,  to  con- 
sist itself  in  certain  constant  relations  between  ideas.  It  is 
under  the  influence  of  the  former  notion  of  the  object — as 
that  of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  not  ideas,  not  con- 
sciousness— that  a  prerogative  of  reality  is  supposed  to  belong 
to  simple  ideas,  or  to  feelings  as  opposed  to  thought.  Of 
these,  in  Locke's  language,  'we  cannot  make  one  to  our- 
selves ; '  they  *  thrust  themselves  upon  us  whether  we  will 
or  no ; '  and  thus,  since  a  representative  within  conscious- 
ness must  needs  be  sought  of  the  object  determined  by  oppo- 
sition to  it,  they  are  naturally  fastened  upon  to  do  duty  as 
such.  So  far,  however,  no  characterisation  has  been  gained 
for  the  real  which  enables  us  to  say  anything  about  it,  or 
which  can  constitute  a  knowledge.  To  say  that  I  feel  it  tells 
nothing  unless  I  can  say  what  my  feeling  is.  But  in  order 
to  say  this  I  must  have  recourse  to  relations.  These  form 
the  nature  of  every  feeling,  whether  we  regard  them  simply 
as  relations  between  it  and  other  feelings,  or  as  relations 
between  it  and  some  kind  of  matter;  whether,  after  the  pre- 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  879 

vailing  maimer  of  Locke's  second  book,  we  interpret  them  as 
representing  (in  the  way  either  of  likeness  or  effect)  qualities 
of  body,  or  in  the  more  modern  mode,  which  begins  to  appear 
in  his  fourth  book,  as  *  facts  *  in  the  way  of  coincidence  with, 
or  sequence  upon,  other  phenomena.  But  these  relations,  in 
virtue  of  which  alone  feeling  has  any  definite  reality  at  all, 
derive  their  being  from  that  from  which  feeling  is  supposed 
not  to  derive  itself;  that  from  which  it  could  not  derive  itself 
without  losing  its  supposed  title  to  represent  the  real.  We 
do  not  care  to  show  here,  as  can  be  shown  from  Locke's  own 
words,  that  according  to  him  they  are  creations  of  thought, 
or  to  press  that  distinction  between  feeling  and  thought 
which  does  not  apply  to  feeling  in  its  reality,  but  only  to 
feeling  as  it  would  be  if  what  the  sensationalists  say  of  it 
were  true.  It  is  clear  that  relations  between  feelings  can 
only  exist  for  a  combining  consciousness,  whether  we  call 
this  feeling  or  thought ;  and  the  same  would  be  equally  clear 
of  relations  between  feeling  and  motions  or  configurations 
of  matter,  if  the  combining  action  were  not  overlooked  under 
the  phrase  which  has  cx^me  to  cover  it.  A  motion  can  only 
be  a  motion,  or  a  configuration  a  configuration,  for  a  subject 
to  which  every  stage  of  the  one,  every  part  of  the  other,  is 
equally  present  with  the  rest ;  and  what  is  such  a  subject 
but  conscious  9  We  are  thus  brought  to  the  contradiction 
which  underlies  all  Locke's  doctrine,  and  which  current 
philosophy  must  show  that  it  has  overcome  if  it  is  to  be  proof 
against  the  charge  of  being  anachronistic — the  contradiction 
between  that  conception  of  the  real  on  the  one  hand,  which 
alone  allows  of  its  being  knowable,  but  at  the  same  time,  by 
finding  it  in  relations,  implies  that  it  is  a  work  of  thought, 
and  a  conception  which  leaves  it  the  unknown  negative  of 
consciousness  on  the  other  hand.  Only  if  the  latter  concep- 
tion is  the  true  one,  is  there  any  reason  for  taking  feeling,  on 
the  ground  of  the  mind's  supposed  passivity  in  it,  to  be  the 
organ  which  reports  the  real ;  only  if  the  former  conception 
be  the  true  one,  has  feeling  anything  real  to  report. 

7.  It  was  the  presence  of  this  contradiction  in  Locke's  sys-  lu  de- 
tem  that  led  to  its  disintegration  at  the  hands  of  Berkeley  and  7®^**EJ°^"* 
Hume.    The  process  of  this  disintegration  it  would  be  super-  ley: 
fluous  here  to  trace.     We  have  only  to  do  with  the  element? 
which  it  left  for  assimilation  by  a  new  philosophy.    Berkeley, 
it  is  well  known,  fastened  on  the  supposed  externality  of  the 


380  MB.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

real  something  which  with  Locke  feeling  wa«  taken  to  repre- 
sent; baty  as  commonly  nnderstood,  and  as  it  is  at  least  not 
very  easy  to  avoid  understanding  him,  he  raised  the  wrong 
question  about  it.  The  true  question  is  not  whether  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  external  matter,  but  what  it  is  external 
to ;  whether  its  outwardness  is  an  outwardness  to  thought, 
or  an  outwardness  of  body  to  body  only  possible /or  thought. 
The  great  lesson  which  Berkeley  has  left  for  posterity  to 
learn  is  the  mischief  of  confusing  these  questions.  That  it 
has  scarcely  yet  been  learnt  is  shown  by  the  genei-al  accept- 
ance  of  Hume's  dictum — the  dictum  of  his  unphilosophical 
maturity — that  Berkeley's  doctrine  *  admits  of  no  answer 
and  produces  no  conviction.'  In  truth,  the  doctrine  which 
*  produces  no  conviction '  is  the  doctrine  that  *  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  external  matter ; '  and  it  is  one  which  admits 
of  an  easy  answer — an  answer  which  Dr.  Johnson  wisely 
symbolised  in  action.  That  which  does  admit  of  no  answer 
is  the  doctrine  that  all  externality  is  a  relation  of  matter  to 
matter,  with  which  the  relation  between  thought  and  its 
object  can  only  be  identified  by  a  misleading  metaphor,  since 
tbougbt  alone  furnishes  the  synthesis  in  virtue  of  which  any 
relation  of  externality  can  exist ;  and  in  this  doctrine,  though 
the  influence  of  familiar  language  may  make  it  difficult  to 
comprehend,  there  is  nothing  to  repel  popular  conviction. 
And  by  8.  In  default  of  n  clear  recognition  of  this  first  principle  of  a 

Uume.  valid  idealism,  Berkeley  achieved  nothing  but  the  exposure 
of  Locke's  equivocation  between  felt  thing  and  feeling.  In 
other  words,  he  eliminated  from  the  real  world,  as  outward, 
those  relations  which  cannot  be  given  in  feeling  if  the  sup- 
posed title  of  feeling  to  represent  the  real,  as  derived  from 
the  distinction  between  it  and  the  work  of  thought,  is  to  be 
maintained.  The  outer  world  thus  ceases  to  be  explicable  as 
a  S)  stem  of  things  acting  on  us  and  on  each  other,  and  becomes 
merely  a  sequence  of  feelings.  So  far,  however,  the  work  of 
sceptioism  was  only  half  done.  The  inner  causative  substance^ 
which  Locke  had  put  alongside  of  the  outer  as  a  co-ordinate 
source  of  ideas,  still  survived.  To  it  Berkeley  did  not  apply 
his  master's  canon  of  reality,  and  in  it  could  be  found  a  plau- 
sible explanation  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge.  The 
thinking  thing  might  be  supposed  to  hold  together  successive 
feelings  as  a  connected  experience.  It  was  virtually  in  this 
supposition  that  Berkeley  found  rest,  without  attempting 


Mn.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  381 

either  to  articulate  it  into  an  explanation  of  the  sciences  or 
to  justify  the  exemption  of  the  thinking  thing  from  the  samu 
treatment  which  he  had  applied  to  the  felt  thing.  The  work 
which  he  had  begun  in  the  supposed  interest  of  religion, 
Hume  completed  in  an  interest  which  it  is  the  fashion  to 
call  one  of  pure  scepticism,  but  which  it  is  difficult  to  dis- 
tinguish from  that  of  personal  vanity.  Having  disposed  of 
the  thinking  thing  by  the  same  method  by  which  Berkeley 
had  disposed  of  unthinking  matter — as  a  superfluous  intel- 
lectual interpretation  of  the  data  of  feeling — he  was  left  in 
front  of  the  question,  How  there  comes  to  be  a  knowable 
world?  But  he  rather  showed  the  necessity  of  meeting  it 
than  met  it  himself.  What  was  logically  required  of  him, 
was  to  account  for  the  appearance  of  there  being  those  rela- 
tions which  seem  to  form  the  content  of  our  knowledge,  but 
which  disappear  from  reality  when  reality  is  reduced  to  a 
sequence  of  feelings.  In  regard  to  the  relations  of  cause  and 
effect,  and  of  identity,  he  seriously  attempted  this.  He  re- 
duces them  in  effect  to  tendencies  of  memory  and  expectation, 
to  instinctive  habits  consisting  in  this,  that  the  recurrence  of 
a  feeling,  upon  which  another  has  been  constantly  and  closely 
sequent,  recalls  that  other  with  special  liveliness.  His  account 
of  them,  however,  not  only  has  the  fault  that  it  makes  the 
actual  procedure  of  the  sciences  inexplicable — a  fault  which 
may  perhaps  be  considered  a  virtue  in  a  system  professedly 
sceptical :  it  is  also  inconsistent  with  the  principle  which  led 
to  such  an  account  being  attempted — the  principle  that  what- 
ever is  not  given  in  feeling,  and  in  feeling  from  which  all 
determination  by  thought  is  excluded,  is  unreal.  It  assumes, 
if  nothing  else,  yet  at  least  the  relations  of  succession  and 
coincidence,  as  that  of  which  the  experience  generates  the 
secondary  impressions  or  tendencies  described,  and  these 
relations  are  not  so  given.  This  feeling,  and  this,  and  this, 
ad  indefinituniy  do  not  constitute  a  succession  except  as  held 
together  by  a  conscious  something  else,  present  equally  to 
each  of  them  ;  and  this  something  else  is  by  the  hypothesis 
excluded  from  reality.  Thus  the  very  proposition,  that  reality 
is  nothing  but  a  succession  of  feelmgs,  is  self-contradictory, 
for,  ir  the  absence  of  everything  but  such  succession,  the 
succession  itself  could  not  be.  A  system  like  Hume*s  which 
started  from  such  a  proposition —a  proposition,  we  must  not 
forget,  to  which  philosophy  had  been  brought  in  the  attempt 


882  MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

to  work  out  consistently  a  conception  of  reality  still  current 
among  us — was  foredoomed  to  failure. 
^  9.  The  failure,  however,  has  not  been  generally  recognised. 

•  experi-      Hume's  natural  history  of  ideas  is  often  referred  to  as  a  fore- 
entiahst J     (jg^^  ^f  ^^q  great  *  discovcry/  which,  by  those  who  have  never 
complete.     Understood  the  real  point  of  the  controversy  about  a  priori 
but  mis-     ideas,  is  commonly  regarded  as  its  final  settlement.      The 
stands        hereditary  transmission  of  tendencies  is  supposed  to  give  the 
Hume's       order  of  nature  time  enough  to  produce  in  the  human  con- 
sciousness those  elementary  ideas  of  relation  which  seem  to 
determine,  not  to  result  from,  the  experience  of  the  individual, 
and  Hume's  doctrine,  it  is  thought,  only  required  reinforce- 
ment from  the  discovery  of  this  law  to  become  proof  against 
all  attack.    Such  a  notion  shows  that  the  very  essence  of  his 
doctrine  has  been  misapprehended.     It  is  being  regarded  as 
no  more  than  an  account  of  a  process  by  which,  given  certain 
relations  as  objectively  existing,  a  knowledge  of  them  on  the 
part  of  the  individual  has  been  gradually  formed.     In  truth, 
what  its   history  required  it  to  be,  and   what  it  actually 
attempted  to  be,  was  an  explanation  of  the  process  by  which, 
in  the  absence  of  all  such  relations  as  objectively  real,  the 

*  fiction '  of  their  existence  has  come  to  be  formed.  Hume 
knows  no  distinction  between   fact   and   impression.     The 

*  impression  of  reflection,'  to  which  he  reduces  every  case  of 
necessary  connection — the  propensity,  namely,  to  pass  from 
one  particular  feeling  to  another — is  itself  the  only  relation 
of  cause  and  effect  which  he  can  allow  really  to  exist.  He 
can  recognise  no  unity  of  the  world,  no  uniformity  of  nature, 
but  the  regularity,  varying  in  every  individual  and  at  every 
age,  with  which  one  idea  suggests  another  in  memory  or 
imagination.  Hence  the  peculiar  difficulty  of  adjusting  his 
system,  so  far  as  it  is  faithfully  maintained,  to  the  procedure 
of  the  physical  sciences — a  difficulty  from  which  the  modern 

*  experientialist '  saves  himself  by  assuming  both  the  reality 
of  an  objective  order,  and  an  elementary  consciousness  of  it, 
as  antecedents  of  the  process  by  which  knowledge  is  attained. 
He  cannot,  however,  claim  any  superiority  over  Hume  for  so 
doing.  He  is  merely  ignoring  the  previous  question  which 
Hume  was  trying  to  meet.  Given  a  world  of  intelligible  re- 
lations, it  is  easy  to  account  for  knowledge.     The  modern 

*  experientialist  *  is  taking  the  reality  of  such  a  world  ioT 
granted  along  with  a  theory  of  reality  which  excludes  it. 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         888 

Hume  was  trying  to  explain  it  away  in  order  that  the  same 
theory  of  reality — the  theory  which  identifies  it  with  feeling 
— might  he  consistently  maintained. 

10.  Where  Hume  has  heen  misapprehended,  Eant  is  not  ^*  he  doei 
likely  to  be  understood.  As  Hume's  doctrine  is  thought  to  be  of  Kant, 
completed,  so  Kant's  is  thought  to  be  superseded,  by  recent  ^^^^^  \«  , 
discoveries  in  the  natural  history  of  man.  Kant,  it  is  sup-  bj  the  doc- 
posed,  in  spite  of  his  own  disclaimer,  believed  in  innate  ideas,  Jnne  of 
though,  instead  of  using  that  term,  he  called  them  a  priori  mUs^^.* 
forms.  It  is  allowed  that  something  was  to  be  said  for  that 
belief  so  long  as  the  work  of  experience  on  the  individual  con- 
sciousness was  held  to  begin  with  the  individual's  own  life,  but 
the  discovery  that  accumulated  effects  of  experience  can  be 
transmitted,  through  modifications  of  structure,  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  fully  explains  all  that  Kant  sought  to  ex- 
plain by  the  supposition  of  forms,  which  render  experience  pos- 
sible but  are  not  its  result.  For  the  present  we  postpone  the 
inquiry  whether  the  psychological  inferences  drawn  fi:om  the 
alleged  fact  of  transmission  do  not  mostly  imply  a  furdPaais 
el9  aXXx)  yh/os — a  confusion  between  the  transmission  of  habits, 
which  is  one  thing,  and  the  transmission  of  conceptions, 
which  is  quite  another.  What  has  here  to  be  pointed  out  is 
that  the  question  treated  by  Kant,  and  raised  for  him  by  Hume, 
is  not  such  a  question  of  ^  psychogenesis '  as  the  supposed 
discovery  meets.  It  concerns  the  objective  relations  which 
render  experience  possible,  not  the  individual's  convictions 
in  regard  to  them.  According  to  Mr.  Lewes,  *  by  showing 
that  constant  experiences  of  the  race  become  organised  ten- 
dencies which  are  transmitted  as  a  heritage,  Mr.  Spencer 
shows  that  such  a  priori  forms  as  those  of  space,  time, 
causality,  Ac.  which  must  have  arisen  in  experience  because 
of  the  constancy  and  universality  of  the  external  relations, 
are  necessarily  connate.'  *  In  other  words,  Mr.  Spencer  has 
shown  that,  given  space,  time,  and  causality,  as  constant  and 
universal  external  relations,  together  with  an  experience  of 
them,  they  become  necessarily  connate  forms  of  experience. 
To  have  shown  this,  however,  does  not  seem  a  great  achieve- 
ment, for  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  derived  result  differs 
from  that  from  which  it  is  derived,  and,  if  it  does  not  differ, 
what  merit  there  is  in  the  discovery  which  explains  the 
deiivation.     Between   relations,  constant   and  universal,  of 

*  PrtbUms  of  Life  and  Mind,  vol.  i.  p.  246. 


884  MB.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

which,  though  external,  there  is  experience,  (the  source),  and 

*  necessarily  connate  forms  of  experience,'  (the  result),  the 
difference  is  only  verbal.  Is  it  meant  that  the  *  relations  ' 
are  external,  the  ^connate  forms'  internal,  and  that  the 
transmission  of  tendencies  explains  the  process  by  which  the 
external  becomes  internal?  We  should  be  sorry  to  believe 
that  Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr.  Lewes  regard  the  relation  betwec-n 
consciousness  and  the  world  as  corresponding  to  that  between 
two  bodies,  of  which  one  is  inside  the  other ;  but  apart  from 
some  such  crude  imagination  it  does  not  appear  that  the  ex- 
ternality of  the  relations  in  question,  which  are  brought 
within  consciousness  by  the  statement  that  we  have  expe- 
rience of  them,  can  mean  anything  else  than  that  experience 
depends  on  them,  not  they  on  it — that  they  are  constituents 
of  it  in  its  simplest  possible  mode,  not  its  gradually-formed 
result.  Bat  this  is  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  they  are 
its  *  necessarily  connate  forms.'  Kant  held  no  other  view  of 
them,  but  instead  of  applying  himself  to  the  superfluous 
labour  of  showing  how  the  external  relations  become  the 

*  connate  forms  '  which  they  already  are  under  another  name, 
he  sought  to  analyse,  and,  in  his  own  language,  to  '  deduce ' 
them.  He  set  himself,  in  other  words,  to  ascertain  what  the 
relations  are  which  are  necessary  to  constitute  any  intelligent 
experience  or  (which  is  the  same)  any  knowable  world ;  and 
to  explain  Aoio  {not  why)  there  come  to  be  such  relations — 
what  is  presupposed  in  the  fact  that  there  they  are. 

For  the  n,  Qf  his  success  or  failure  in  the  work  he  undertook  we 

stiH  re-**      *re  not  here  concerned  to  speak.     For  the  present  it  is  only 

mains,        important  to  point  out  the  mistake  of  our  *  experiential  psy- 

there  come  chologists '  in  putting  their  theory  into  competition  with  his, 

to  be 'facts'  as  if  it  dealt  with  the  same  question.     He  is  at  least  trying 

jecttve  °^    to  explain  what  they  take  for  granted.     It  will  perhaps  be 

world?*      replied  that  it  was  just  in  this  that  his  &ult  or  misfortune 

lay;  that,  like  other  metaphysicians,  he  spent  himself  in 

seeking  to  solve  the  insoluble — to  get  behind  or  beyond  the 

ultimate  data  of  inquiry — and  hence  contributed  nothing  to 

the  stock  of  positive  knowledge  which  empirical  psychology 

has  so  largely  increased.     In  order  to  estimate  the  value  of 

the  received  view  which  such  language  implies,  we  mu^t  look 

more  closely  at  these  *  ultimate  data.'    Are  they  really  facts 

behind  which  we  cannot  penetrate,  or  mei-ely  familiar  theories 

which,  in  default  of  further  analysis  and  explanation,  are 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         886. 

vitiating  the  inferences  drawn  from  them?  So  long  as  the 
dominant  philosophy  is  allowed  to  represent  the  question 
between  it  and  its  ^idealist'  opponents  in  the  mode  which 
generally  passes  current,  the  continuance  of  its  domination 
is  assured.  If  the  alternative  really  lay  between  experience 
and  ready-made  unaccountable  intuition  as  sources  of  know- 
ledge ;  if  the  point  in  dispute  were  whether  theories  about 
nature  should  be  tested  merely  by  logical  consistency  or  ex- 
perimentally verified — whether  ^  subjective  beliefs '  should  be 
put  in  the  place  of  ^  objective  facts/  or  brought  into  corre- 
spondence with  them — the  '  experientialists '  would  be  en- 
titled to  all  the  self-confidence  which  they  show.  That  the 
question  does  not  so  stand,  they  can  scarcely  be  expected 
to  admit  till  their  opponents  constrain  them  to  it ;  and  in 
England  hitherto,  whether  from  want  of  penetration  or 
under  the  influence  of  a  theological  arrHre  pens^^  their 
opponents  have  virtually  put  the  antithesis  in  the  form  which 
yields  the  ^  experientialists '  such  an  easy  triumph.  Both 
sides  are  in  fact  beating  the  air  till  they  meet  upon  the 
question,  What  constitutes  the  experience  which  it  is  agreed 
is  to  us  the  sole  conveyance  of  knowledge  ?  What  do  we 
mean  by  a  fact?  In  what  lies  the  objectivity  of  the  objec- 
tive world  P 

12.  According  to  Mr.  Spencer's  own  statement,  a  certain  A  relation 
conception  of  the  relation  between  subject  and  object  is  the  gubjectand 
presupposition  of  his  system  :  ^  The  relation  between  these,  object  is 
as  antithetically  opposed  divisions  of  the  entire  assemblage  Jj^^j^^^™ 
of  manifestations  of  the  imknowable,  was  our  datum.     The  SpenceVa 
fabric  of  conclusions  built  upon  it  must  be  unstable  if  this  J^^^^ 
datum  can  be  proved  either  untrue  or  doubtful.    Should  caption  of 
the  idealist  be  right,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  a  dream.'  ^  •ioealiam^ 
To  those  who  have  humbly  accepted  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 
tion as  a  valuable  formulation  of  our  knowledge  of  animal 
life,  but  at  the  same  time  think  of  themselves  as  ^  idealists,' 
this  statement  may  at  first  cause  some  uneasiness.     On  ex- 
amination, however,  they  will  find  in  the  first  place  that  when 
Mr.  Spencer  in  such  a  connection  speaks  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  he  is  thinking  chiefly   of  its  application  to  the 
explanation  of  knowledge — an  application  at  least  not  neces- 
sarily admitted  in  the  acceptance  of  it  as  a  theory  of  animal 
life ;  and  secondly,  that  what  Mr.  Spencer  understands  by 

>  Principles  of  Psycholcffy.    Edition  of  1872,  §  387. 
VOL.   I.  0  0 


386        MR    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

^  idealism  '  is  what  a  raw  nndergraduate  understands  by  it. 
It  means  to  him  a  doctrine  that  '  there  is  no  snch  thing  as 
matter/  or  that  *  the  external  world  is  merel j  the  creation  of 
our  own  minds  *— a  doctrine  expressly  rejected  by  Kant,  and 
which  has  had  no  place  since  his  time  in  any  idealism  that 
knows  what  it  is  about.  Either  Mr.  Spencer's  profound 
study  of  the  physical  sciences  has  not  left  him  leisure,  or  his 
splendid  faculty  of  generalisation  has  relieved  him  from  the 
necessity,  for  a  thorough  investigation  of  the  history  of 
philosophy.  In  lieu  of  it  there  are  signs  of  his  having  ac- 
cepted Sir  W.  Hamilton's  classification  of  'isms.  His  study 
of  ^  idealism '  at  first  hand  would  seem  to  have  been  confined 
to  a  hasty  reading  of  Berkeley  and  Hume,  of  whom  it  is  easy 
enough  to  show  that  their  speculation  does  not  agree  with 
common  sense,  but  not  so  easy  to  show  that  it  is  other  than  a 
logical  attempt  to  reduce  Locke's  formulation  of  the  deliver- 
ances of  common  sense,  which  is  also  virtually  Mr.  Spencer's, 
to  consistency  with  itself.  Of  Kant  it  is  hard  to  suppose 
that  he  would  write  as  he  does  if  he  had  read  the  *  Tran- 
scendental Analytik '  at  all,  or  the  ^  Transcendental  ^sthetik' 
otherwise  than  hastily.  This  is  not  said  in  order  to  raise  a 
preliminary  suspicion  against  his  system,  which  may  very 
well  have  a  higher  value  than  could  be  given  by  a  critical  ap- 
preciation of  other  people's  opinions — which  must  at  any  rate 
stand  or  fall  upon  its  own  merits,  and  will  certainly  not  fall 
for  any  lack  of  intellectual  energy  or  wide-reaching  know- 
ledge upon  the  part  of  its  author.  It  is  merely  said  as  a 
justification  for  ignoring  his  polemic  against  idealists,  and 
passing  straight  to  a  consideration  of  his  own  account  of  his 
*  datum,'  and  of  the  consequences  he  draws  fi*om  it. 
True  ideal-  1 B.  Little  as  a  well-instructed  idealist  of  this  century  would 
istic  view  recogiiise  himself  in  the  portrait  which  Mr.  Spencer  draws  of 
lationof  ^^^9  ^^  would  readily  admit  that  in  the  ^ datum'  above 
subject  stated,  as  understood  by  Mr.  Spencer,  lies  the  root  of  bitter- 
an  o  jec .  ^^^^  between  them.  To  such  an  idealist  all  knowing  and 
all  that  is  known,  all  intelligence  and  intelligible  reality, 
indifferently  consist  in  a  relation  between  subject  and  ob- 
ject. The  generic  element  in  his  definition  of  tiie  knowable 
universe  is  that  it  is  such  a  relation.  The  value  of  this 
elementary  definition,  he  is  well  aware,  depends  on  its  further 
differentiation ;  but  he  holds  it  to  be  the  first  step  in  any 
account  that  is  to  be  true  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  or  in  its 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  887 

real  concreteness,  in  distinction  from  the  accounts  of  its  parts 
rendered  by  the  several,  more  or  less  abstract,  sciences. 
Neither  of  the  two  correlata  in  his  view  has  any  reality  apart 
from  the  other.  Every  determination  of  the  one  implies  a 
corresponding  determination  of  the  other.  The  object,  for 
instance,  may  be  known,  nnder  one  of  the  manifold  relations 
which  it  involves,  as  matter,  bat  it  is  only  so  known  in  virtue 
of  what  may  indifferently  be  called  a  constructive  act  on  the 
part  of  the  subject,  or  a  manifestation  of  itself  on  the  part 
of  the  object.  The  subject  in  virtue  of  the  act,  the  object 
in  virtue  of  the  manifestation,  are  alike  and  in  strict  corre- 
lativity  so  far  determined.  Of  what  would  otherwise  be 
unknown,  it  can  now  be  said  either  that  it  appears  as  matter, 
or  that  it  is  that  to  which'matter  appears.  The  reality  is  just 
this  appearance,  as  one  mode  of  the  relation  between  subject 
and  object.  Neither  is  the  matter  anything  without  the 
appearance,  nor  is  that  to  which  it  appears  anything  without 
the  appearance  to  it.  The  reality  of  matter,  then,  as  of 
anything  else  that  is  known,  is  just  as  little  merely  objective 
as  merely  subjective ;  while  the  reality  of  *  mind,'  if  by  that 
is  meant  the  '  connected  phenomena  of  conscious  life,'  is  not 
a  whit  more  subjective  than  objective.  *  Matter,'  in  being 
known,  becomes  a  relation  between  subject  and  object; 
*  mind,'  in  being  known,  becomes  so  equally.  It  follows  that 
it  is  incorrect  to  speak  of  the  relation  between  ^  matter  and 
mind ' — *  mind '  being  understood  as  above — as  if  it  were  the 
same  with  that  between  subject  and  object.  A  mode  of  the 
latter  relation  constitutes  each  member  alike  of  the  former 
relation.  The  'phenomena  of  matter,'  the  'phenomena  of 
consciousness,'  the  connection  between  the  two  sets  of  phe- 
nomena, equally  belong  to  an  objective  world,  of  which  the 
objectivity  is  only  possible  for  a  subject.  Nor  is  it  to  the 
purpose  to  say  that,  though  matter  as  known  involves  the  re- 
lation of  subject  and  object,  matter  m  itself  does  not.  We 
need  not  inquire  for  the  present  into  the  meaning  of '  matter 
in  itself.'  The  matter  which  is  in  question,  when  we  speak 
of  a  relation  between  matter  and  mind  as  equivalent  to  that 
between  object  and  subject,  is  not  'matter  in  itself,'  but 
matter  as  a  '  phenomenon '  or  as  known ;  and  since  in  thid 
sense  it  is  a  certain  sort  of  relation  between  object  and  sub- 
ject, it  may  not  be  identified  with  one  member  of  that  rela- 
tion to  the  exclusion  of  the  other. 

c  c  2 


888         MR.    8PENCEB    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

^^'  14.  Soch  being  the  idealist's  view,  his  quarrel  with  fhe 

espUUof      doctrine  of  which  Mr.  Spencer  is  the  most  eminent  repre- 
knoviedge  sentative  is  briefly  this,  IJiat  taking,  and  rightly  taking,  the 
iodepeod-    I'^l^^^on  between  object  and  subject  as  its  datum,  it  first 
entactioD    misinterprets  this  into  a  ^  dictum '  on  the  part  of  conscious- 
OT  roSect   '^^^^  *^*  something  independent  of  itself — something  which 
jetpmnip'  Can  ezist  without  consciousness,  though  not  consciousness 
^JJJUJj^^  without  it — is  acting  upon  it ;  and  then  proceeds  to  explain 
bdon:       that  knowledge  of  the  world  which  is  the  developed  relation 
between  object  and  subject,  as  resulting  fix>m  an  action  of 
one  member  of  the  relation  upon  the  other.     It  ascribes  to 
the  object,  which  in  truth  is  nothing  without  the  subject,  an 
independent  reality,  and  then  supposes  it  gradually  to  pro- 
duce certain  qualities  in  the  subject,  of  which  the  existence 
is  in  truth  necessary  to  the  possibility  of  those  qualities  in 
the  object  which  are  supposed  to  produce  them.    Instead  of 
regarding  subject  and  object  as  logical  or  ideal  (though  not 
the  less  real)  factors  of  a  world  which  thought  constitutes,  it 
'  segregates '  them  as  opposite  divisions  of  the  world,  as  two 
parts  of  the  complex  of  phenomena,  separate  though  capable 
of  mutual  interaction,  of  which  one  is  summarily  described 
as  thoughts,  the  other  as  things.   If  we  ask  for  the  warrant 
of  this  antithetical  division,  a  deliverance  of  consciousness 
is  appealed  to— a  deliverance  which  is  derived  from  the  true 
correlation  of  subject  and  object,  but  is  misinterpreted  as 
evidence  of  the  separate  existence  of  the  latter.   *  Thoughts  * 
having  been  thus  made  the  evidence  for  '  things,'  no  more 
questions  are  asked  about  the  '  things.'     On  the  strength  of 
the  admitted  determination  of  subject  by  object — the  con- 
verse determination  being    ignored — they  are    afterwards 
assumed  to  be  the  efficient  cause  of  thoughts.'   As  apparent 
objects  they  are  supposed  to  produce  the  intelligence  which 
is  the  condition  of  their  appearance.      Through  qualities 
which  in  truth  they  only  possess  as  relative  to  a  distinguish- 
ing and  combining  consciousness,  and  through  the  'registra- 
tion '  of  these  in  the  sentient  organism,  they  are  supposed 
gradually  to  generate  those  forms  of    synthesis  without 
which  in  fact  they  themselves  would  not  be. 
hU^opde  ^^'  ""^^^  above  we  believe  to  represent  the  logical  order 

of  sute-      which  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy  follows.    A  happy  instinct, 
ment  dis-     however,  has  led  him  in  the  statement  of  it  to  put  his  pre- 
suppositions in  regard  to  object  and  subject  last.     In  his 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  889 

'  Psjcliology '  he  first  triamphantlj  explains,  through  three  piiMs  th« 
fourths  of  the  book,  the  genesis  of '  thought '  from  '  things  *  ^~°"'^ 
on  the  strength  of  the  assumed  priority  and  independence  of 
the  latter,  and  defers  the  considerations  likely  to  raise  the 
question  whether  this  assumption  is  correct — he  never 
directly  raises  it  himself — till  he  can  approach  them  with 
the  prestige  of  a  system  already  proved  adequate  and  suc- 
cessful. If  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  true,  the  idealists 
are  crushed  already.  If  they  are  right,  ^  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  is  a  dream.'  Such  being  the  alternative  stated, 
the  reader,  to  whom  the  doctrine  has  already  been  exhibited 
as  an*  explanation  of  himself  sanctioned  by  the  collective 
authority  of  the  sciences,  is  naturally  ready  to  take  the  de» 
xnolition  of  the  idealists  for  granted.  If,  however,  at  the 
end  of  the  hundred  and  fifty  pages,  full  of  logical  sound  and 
ftiry,  through  which  the  refutation  of  an  idealism,  unrecog- 
nisable* by  idealists,  is  carried  on,  he  retains  any  curiosity 
about  the  doctrine  which  is  to  take  its  place  and  to  justify 
all  the  preceding  system,  he  will  find  a  good  deal  to  surprise 
him.  Having  gathered  from  Mr.  Spencer's  refutation  of 
them  that  the  idealists  are  people  who  perversely  identify 
subject  and  object,  and  refuse  to  recognise  the  latter  as  a 
real  world  beyond  consciousness,  he  naturally  expects  that 
the  object  according  to  the  true  doctrine  of  it  wUl  turn  out 
to  be  such  a  world.  But  here  Mr.  Spencer  leaves  him  in  the 
lurch.  The  subject  and  the  object,  according  to  the  account 
given  of  them,  are  as  much  or  as  little  beyond  consciousness 
the  one  as  the  other.  Under  the  guise  of  a  novel  doctrine 
which  is  to  reconcile  all  that  is  true  in  idealism  with  the 
opposite  theory,  we  are  offered  a  '  realism,'  *  transfigured  * 
indeed,  but  so  transfigured  as  to  be  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  crude  idealism  of  Locke. 

16.  Let  us  consider  in  detail  the  pertinent  passages  of  His  'ob- 
his  ^  Psychology,'  which  it  takes  some  sifting  to  arrive  at.  J<^^ '  j?  , 
'  Mysterious  as  seems  the  consciousness  of  something  which  and  'out 
is  yet  out  of  consciousness,  the  inquirer  finds  that  he  alleges  o^.'  con- 
the  reality  of  this  something  in  virtue  of  the  ultimate  law  "^^^°®"' 
— he  is  obliged  to  think  it.   There  is  an  indissoluble  cohesion 
between  each  of  those  vivid  and  definite  states  of  conscious-  | 

ness  known  as  a  sensation  and  an  indefinable  consciousness  | 

which  stands  for  a  mode  of  being  beyond  sensation  and  I 


890  MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND   OBJECT. 

separate  from  himself/*  Here  it  appears  that  the  very 
ground  asserted  for  the  'reality  of  something  ont  of  con- 
sciousness' implies  that  this  'something'  is  not  'cat  of 
consciousness/  and  that  the  very  proposition  which  is  in- 
tended to  state  its  outsideness  to  consciousness  in  fact  states 
the  contrary.  The  'something  out  of  consciousness'  is 
^something  we  are  obliged  to  think/  and  is  pronounced 
'  real '  on  account  of  this  obligation.  It  does  not  appear, 
indeed,  whether  the  '  obligation '  is  taken  to  constitute  its 
reality,  or  merely  to  be  an  eyidence  of  it  as  something  ex- 
traneous ;  but  this  can  only  make  a  difference  between  the 
greater  or  less  directness  of  the  contradiction  involved^  the 
statement.  It  is  a  direct  contradiction  to  call  that  '  out  of 
consciousness '  of  which  the  reality  lies  in  the  obligation  to 
think  it,  but  the  other  interpretation  of  Mr.  Spencer's  mean- 
ing only  puts  the  difficulty  a  step  further  back.  It  is  clear 
that  the  'something  we  are  obliged  to  think'  is  something 
we  do  think,  and  therefore  is  not  'ont  of  consciousness.' 
Nay,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  the  sole  account  to  be  given 
of  it  is  that  it  is  a  necessity  of  consciousness.  If,  then,  its 
^  reality '  is  '  out  of  consciousness/  we  have  something  de- 
termined solely  as  being  that  which  its  reality  is  determined 
solely  as  not  being.  Of  the  '  something '  we  can  only  say 
tiiat  it  is  found  in  consciousness ;  of  its  '  reality '  we  can 
only  say  that  it  is  'out  of  consciousness.'  We  look  anxiously 
to  the  next  sentence  for  an  explanation  of  the  paradox,  but 
only  find  it  stated  more  at  large.  The  obligation  to  think 
the  '  something '  now  appears  as  its  '  indissoluble  cohesion 
with  each  sensation,'  and,  as  was  to  be  expected,  the  '  some- 
thing '  thus  cohering  is  now  admitted  to  be  itself  a  '  con- 
sciousness.' Its  distinction  is  that  it  is  '  indefinable/  and 
that  it  'stands  for  a  mode  of  being  beyond  sensation.' 
This  '  mode  of  being  beyond  sensation '  might,  indeed,  be 
understood  in  a  way  whidb  leads  to  a  true  conception  of  the 
object,  but  with  Mr.  Spencer  it  is  merely  equivalent  to  the 
'  something  out  of  consciousness '  of  the  previous  sentence, 
The  only  difference,  then,  which  this  further  statement 
makes  is,  that  the  something  out  of  consciousness  which  we 
are  obliged  to  think  is  now  explicitly  broken  into  an  '  inde^ 
finable  consciousness'  on  the  one  hand,  and  'a  mode  of 
being  beyond  consciousness,  for  which  it  stands,'  on  the 

1  Principles  of  Ptychology,.  %  448. 


MR,    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         8»1 

other.  Now,  an  indefinable  conscionsneBs  means  a  conscious- 
ness of  which  no  account  can  be  given,  but  simply  that  it  is 
a  consciousness.  The  result,  then,  is  that  the  ^  object,'  about 
which  Mr.  Spencer  undertakes  to  set  the  idealists  right,  is, 
according  to  him,  something  of  which  we  can  only  say  that 
it  is  consciousness,  ^  standing  for '  something  of  which  we 
can  only  say  that  it  is  not  consciousness.  In  corre- 
sponding passages  elsewhere,  instead  of  '  stands  for,'  Mr. 
Spencer  writes  *  symbolises,'  but  what  becomes  of  the  symr 
boUcal  relation  when  of  the  symbol  nothing  can  be  said  but 
that  it  is  not  the  thing  symbolised,  and  of  this  nothing  but 
that  it  is  not  the  symbol  P  A  consciousness  which  is  thus 
symbolical  is  indeed  'mysterious,'  but  there  are  mysteries 
which  are  near  akin  to  nonsense. 

17.  So  far  we  have  merely  a  repetition  of  a  notion  fami-  Which  is 
liar  to  students  of  Locke.   According  to  it,  simple  feeling,  of  g^fc^°"J*J^ 
which  nothing  can  be  said  but  that  it  is  feeling,  is  taken  neces-  its  being  a 
sarily  to  represent  a  real  something  of  which  nothing  can  be  *  ^^^^  .  , 
said  but  that  it  is  not  feeling.     We  proceed  to  some  other  of  states  of 
passages : — *  While  it  is  impossible  by  reasoning  either  to  conscioua- 
verify  or  to  falsify  this  deliverance  of  consciousness,  it  is 
possible  to  account  for  it.     .     .     .    This  imperative  con- 
sciousness which  we  have  of  objective  existence,  must  itself 
result  from  the  way  iu  which  our  states  of  consciousness 
hang  together.     .     .     .     Let  us  examine  the  cohesions 
among  the  elements  of  consciousness,  taken  as  a  whole ;  and 
let  us  observe  whether  there  are  any  absolute  cohesions  by 
which  its  elements   are  aggregated  into  two   antithetical 
halves,  standing  respectively  for  subject  and  object.'  * 

The  result  of  tiie  examination  is  thus  stated: — 'The 
totality  of  my  consciousness  is  divisible  into  a  faint  aggre- 
gate which  I  call  my  mind;  a  special  part  of  the  vivid 
aggregate  cohering  with  this  in  various  ways,  which  I  call 
my  body ;  and  the  rest  of  the  vivid  aggregate,  which  has  no 
such  coherence  with  the  faint  aggregate.  This  special  part 
of  the  vivid  aggregate,  which  I  call  my  body,  proves  to  be  a 
part  through  which  the  rest  of  the  vivid  aggregate  works 
changes  in  the  faint,  and  through  which  the  faint  works 
certain  changes  in  the  vivid.'  * 

Here  it  is  more  clear  that  we  have  a  contradiction  of  the 
passage  previously  quoted  than  that  we  have  a  more  tenable 

>  Principies  of  P»yohology,  §  449.        « Ibid,  §  462. 


:392  MR..  SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

view.  There  the  characteristic  of  the  *  object/  as  being* 
'somethiDg  out  of  consciousDess/  is  still  retained,  thongh 
retained  under  difficulties ;  but  here  it  appears  as  itself  an 
aggregate  of  certain  elements  of  consciousness — as  one  half 
of  the  totality  of  consciousness,  antithetical  to  another 
half  which  is  the  subject.  It  is  true  that  at  first  these 
several  ^  halves  of  consciousness '  are  said,  not  to  be,  but  to 
'  stand  for,*  object  and  subject  respectively.  So  £ar  a  verbal 
correspondence  is  maintained  with  the  passage  previously 
quoted,  where  the  ^  indefinable  consciousness  *  was  said  to 
stand  for  a  mode  of  being  beyond  sensation,  but  it  is  merely 
verbal,  for  that  which  here  ^  stands  for  *  the  object,  being  a 
vivid  aggregate  of  elements  of  consciousness,  is  quite 
different  from  the  ^  indefinable  consciousness '  expressly  dis- 
tinguished from  sensation,  there  said  to  stand  for  it.  Nor 
would  it  seem  that  Mr.  Spencer  himself  attaches  much  im- 
portance to  the  distinction  between  ^  is  *  and  *  stands  for,* 
since  he  expressly  identifies  the  distinction  between  the 
'vivid  and  faint  aggregates*  with  that  between  body  and 
mind,  which  again  he  elsewhere  takes  as  equivalent  to  that 
between  object  and  subject ;  and  in  the  sequel  the  ^  separa- 
tion of  themselves  *  on  the  part  of  states  of  consciousness 

*  into  two  great  aggregates,  vivid  and  faint,*  is  spoken  of  as  a 

*  differentiation  between  the  antithetical  existences  we  call 
subject  and  object.*  * 

Howdoea  18.  If  words  mean  anything,  then,  Mr.  Spencer  plainly 

he  make      makes  the  ^  object  *  an  aggregate  of  conscious  states,  of  which 

^aggregate'  "tbe  distinction  from  the  other  aggregate,  called  the  subject,  is 

into  an       to  be  sought  in  the  ^  cohesions  *  between  the  several  states  that 

abiewffllity  ^^^"^  ^^^ih  aggregate.   This  search,  however,  is  to  end  in  the 

hejond       discovery  of  certain  ^absolute  cohesions,*  which  constitute 

neas^?  ***"    ^^^  antithetical  difference  required ;  and  we  do  not  feel  sure 

between  what,  in  the   context  before  us,  these  ^absolute 

cohesions  *  are  understood  to  lie.     With  a  more  scrupulous 

writer  we  should  presume  that,  as  the  cohesions  proposed  for 

examination  are  cohesions  among  the  elements  of  conscious* 

>  Prineiplss  of  Psychology,  §  468 :  being  in  variouB  ways   distingnisbed 

'  While  ve  are  physically  pa^ive,  our  from  the  other.    And  this  partial  dif^ 

states  of  conscionaness  irresistibly  sepa-  ferentiation  between  the  two  antitheti- 

rate  themselves  from  instant  to  instant  cal    existences    we    call    subject  and 

into  the  two  great  aggregates — vivid  and  object,  establishing  itself  before  delibe- 

laint'  each  coherent  within  itself,  having  rate  comparison  is  posnible,  is  made 

ita  own  antecedents,  its  own   laws,  and  clearer  by  deliberate  comparison.* 


nrTH.p       ''r  >^ 


'■EPvSITT, 
MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJE^  Sflj^.^CflllEGT^       803 

ness,  the  ^  absoltitB  cohesions '  which  we  have  to  find  woald 
be  so  likewise;  but  it  may  be  that  Mr.  Spencer  is  here 
contemplating  the  discovery  of  an  absolute  coherence 
between  elements  of  consciousness  and  something  which  is 
'out  of  consciousness'  altogether.  Such  a  coherence, 
according  to  him,  is  given  in  that '  deliverance  of  conscious- 
ness' which  he  undertakes  to  account  for;  ^  and  though  the 
process  of  examination,  as  he  himself  describes  it,  is  one 
which  could  not  possibly  yield  the  account  he  is  in  quest  of, 
we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  that,  when  it  is  over,  he 
supposes  it  to  have  done  so.  The  process  consists  in  point- 
ing out  a  series  of  contrasts^  between  the  states  called 
'vivid*  and  those  called  •  faint,'  which  are  pretty  much  the 
same  as  those  by  which  Berkeley,  following  Locke,  distin- 
guished '  ideas  of  sense '  from  '  ideas  of  imagination,'  and 
Hume  '  impressions '  from  '  ideas,'  and  which  are  often 
taken  to  constitute  the  difference  between  outer  and  inner 
sense.  Criticism  of  them  may  be  postponed  till  a  later  stage 
of  this  inquiry.  All  that  we  have  to  notice  for  the  present 
is,  that  Mr.  Spencer  makes  no  pretence  of  treating  the 
elements  of  the  '  vivid  aggregate '  as  other  than  states  of 
consciousness.  In  one  of  his  illustrations,  for  instance,  he 
speaks  of  making  'the  set  of  visual  states,  which  he  knows 
as  his  umbrella,  move  across  the  sets  of  visual  states  he 
knows  as  the  shingle  and  the  sea,'  with  a  freedom  which 
Berkeley  could  not  surpass.  Nor  is  this  all.  It  is  only  by  a 
misuse  of  terms,  accQrding  to  his  own  showing,  that  this 
vivid  aggregate  is  called  an  aggregate  at  all.  The  '  states  of 
consciousness'  which  form  it  'have  none  of  them  any 
permanence.'  Each  '  changes  from  instant  to  instant.'  To 
speak  of  such  states  '  aggregating '  or  '  segregating  them- 
selves '  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 

19.  We  have  now  to  see  how  the '  object,'  having  been  re-  Only  (like 
duced  to  this  limbo  of  fleeting  states — having  become  half  confusing 
of  the  totality  of  a  consciousness  which,  as  described,  does  feeling  of 
not  admit  of  totality — is  made  to  emerge  again  'beyond  thejud^-^ 
consciousness,'  as  an  •unknowable  reality '  which  causes  our  ment  of 
knowledge.     An  acquaintance  with  Locke  will  prepare  us  *>^<^*J^* 
both  for  the  result  arrived  at,  and  the  process  by  which  it 
is  reached.     The  process  is  the  simple  one  of  putting  along- 
side of  the  dictum  of  consciousness,  that  what  I  feel  is  a 

>  Principles  of  Psychology,  §  449.  «  Ibid.  §  458. 


8M  USL  8PE5CEB    CfS   SUBJKCT   AND   OBJECT. 

feeUng,  the  eoanteF-clietam  that  niiat  I  fSeel  resists,  and  u 
there  before  and  after  m j  feeling.  No  attempt  is  made  at 
saeh  interpretation  of  the  conflicting  dicta  as  might  recon- 
cile while  it  aeeonnted  for  them ;  and,  what  is  more  strange, 
whereas  with  Locke  the  former  dictnm  is  not  fnllj  artica- 
lated,  with  Mr.  Spencer  it  is  emphasised  as  strongly  as  witii 
Berkelej  and  Himie,  while  jet  his  mode  of  dealing  with  it 
IS,  in  principle,  no  other  th^  a  resort  to  Locke's  confosion 
between  feeling  of  tonch  and  the  jndgment  of  solidity. 

Haring  alleged,  as  one  of  the  leading  contrasts  between 
states  of  consciousness  belonging  to  the  yiyid  aggregate  and 
those  belonging  to  the  faint,  that  the  former  are  '  unchange- 
able by  the  latter  in  their  qnalities  or  order/  he  afterwards 
finds  that  one  sort  of  ^&.int  state'  does  ^tend  to  set  up 
changes  in  a  certain  combination  belonging  to  the  vivid 
aggregate/  Further,  *  the  changes  which  states  in  the  &int 
aggregate  ' — which  is  in  the  vulgar  the  mind — *  set  up  in 
this  particular  part  of  the  vivid  aggregate ' — which  in  the 
boorish  is  the  body — *  prove  to  be  the  means  of  setting  up 
special  classes  of  changes  in  the  rest  of  the  vivid  aggregate ' 
—which  in  the  common  is  the  world.  Thus  'ideas  and 
emotions,  exciting  muscular  tensions,  give  my  limbs  power 
to  transpose  certain  clusters  of  vivid  states.'  Here  we  arrive 
at  experiences  which,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer, '  give  con- 
creteness  and  comparative  solidity  to  the  conceptions  of  self 
and  not-self; '  and  he  proceeds,  with  an  abundance  of  illus- 
tration which  abridgment  would  spoil,  to  explain  how  the 
*  mutual  exploration  of  our  limbs,  excited  by  ideas  and  emo- 
tions, establishes  an  indissoluble  cohesion  in  thought  between 
active  energy  as  it  wells  up  from  the  depths  of  our  conscious- 
ness, and  the  equivalent  resistance  opposed  to  it :  as  well  as 
between  the  resistance  opposed  to  it  and  equivalent  pressure 
in  the  part  of  the  body  which  resists.  Hence  the  root-con- 
ception of  existence  beyond  consciousness  becomes  that  of 
resistance  plus  some  force  which  the  resistance  measures.'  ^ 

20.  But  Mr.  Spencer  is  counting  his  chickens  before  they 
are  hatched.  We  shall  not  dispute  that  the  process  which  he 
ingfor tuo-  describes  may  ^  give  ooucreteness  to  the  conceptions  of  self 
coiMonof  u^nd  not-self,*  or  that  through  it  *the  root-conception  of 
experience  existence  beyond  consciousness '  may  become  what  he  says 
of  cause      Jt  becomes.      In  passing,   indeed,   we  would  commend  a 

>  Princijflea  qf  Psychology,  §§  461,  462,  466. 


tacitly 


substitut- 


MR.    SPENCER   ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         896 

doctrine,  which  implies  that  the  more  abstract  conception  is  and  sab- 
prior  to  the  more  concrete,  to  the  attention  of  any  of  Mr.  ■**"®®- 
Spencer's  disciples  who  may  still  identify  thought  with  ab- 
straction. What  we  have  to  notice,  however,  is  that  if  the 
conceptions  of  self  and  not-self,  of  existence  beyond  con- 
scioasness,  are  to  be  thus  affected,  they  must  be  present ; 
and  that  Mr.  Spencer  has  not  only  not  accounted  for  their 
presence,  but  has  put  in  their  stead  certain  successions  of 
states  of  consciousness.  We  were  waiting  to  see  how  either 
these  successions  were  to  be  transformed  severally  into  self 
and  not-self,  or  the  conceptions  of  these  objects  were  to  be 
otherwise  accounted  for;  but  instead  of  this,  we  are  offered 
an  account  of  a  process  which  presupposes  both  the  objects 
and  the  conceptions  of  them.  Mr.  Spencer,  like  Locke, 
'  looks  into  his  breast '  and  finds  the  experience  of  resistance 
(Locke's  *  solidity  *),  which  at  once  reports  to  him  the  exist- 
ence of  a  resistent  something,  independent  of  consciousness. 
He  never  considers  what  is  implied  in  the  transition  from  a 
succession  of  states  of  consciousness,  distinguished  as  faint 
and  vivid,  to  such  an  experience.  His  account  of  it  in  its 
simplest  form  is  as  follows  : — '  I  find  that  as  to  feelings  of 
touch,  pressure,  and  pain,  when  self-produced  {se.  produced 
by  myself),  there  cohere  those  states  in  my  consciousness 
which  were  their  antecedents ;  it  happens  that  when  they 
are  not  self-produced,  there  cohere  in  my  consciousness  the 
&int  forms  of  such  antecedents — nascent  thoughts  of  some 
energy  akin  to  that  which  I  used  myself.'  *  The  truth  of 
this  account  is  not  now  in  question.  The  point  to  observe 
is,  that  it  is  only  so  far  as  what  is  still  ostensibly  an  account 
of  a  succession  of  conscious  states  really  presupposes  some- 
thing quite  different,  that  it  is  an  account  of  an  experience 
of  resistance.  There  are  certain  relatively  vivid  states — 
feelings  of  touch,  pressure,  and  pain — which  have  their  ante- 
cedents in  certain  relatively  faint  states — ideas  or  emotions. 
This  is  one  proposition :  but  Mr.  Spencer  tacitly  converts  it 
into  another — I  become  conscious,  through  mutual  explora- 
tion of  my  limbs,  of  a  power  to  produce  changes  in  the 
vivid  states  of  consciousness,  known  as  my  body — without 
apparently  being  aware  of  the  difference.  Tet  he  has  really 
substituted  for  a  proposition  asserting  a  succession  of  feelings 
one  expressing  an  experience  determined  by  the  conceptions 

•  PrimipUs  of  Pn/cliology,  §  463. 


896        MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT   AND    OBJECT. 

of  cause  and  substance.  Again,  vivid  feelings,  similar  to 
those  which  have  their  antecedents  in  the  relatively  faint 
ones,  have  their  antecedents  'in  relatively  vivid  ones,  and 
with  these,  notwithstanding  their  sequence  upon  vivid  ante- 
cedents, there  ^  cohere  feint  forms '  of  the  antecedents  belong- 
ing to  the  feint  aggregate  which  like  feelings  have  followed 
in  other  cases.  This,  on  Mr.  Spencer's  authority,  we  are 
ready  to  accept  as  a  phenomenon  of  mental  association  ;  but 
before  it  can  become  even  the  ^  nascent  thought '  of  external 
energy,  a  reduplication  of  the  substitutory  process  already 
noticed  must  be  gone  through.  The  antecedence  of  more 
faint  states  to  more  lively  ones  having  been  previously  con- 
verted into  a  ^  consciousness  of  power,'  &o.  as  above,  the 
^  coherence  with  the  faint  forms '  of  these  antecedents  be- 
comes a  coherence  with  such  a  consciousness.  This  alone, 
however,  would  merely  account  for  the  interpretation  of  the 
feelings  of  touch,  pressure,  and  pain  as  products  of  Hhe 
mind '  in  the  one  case  as  much  as  in  the  other.  To  obtain 
the  required  result,  we  must  suppose  a  combination  effected 
between  the  faint  imagined  antecedents  of  these  feelings, 
interpreted  as  consciousness  of  power,  on  the  one  side,  and 
their  actual  vivid  antecedents,  interpreted  as  body,  on  the 
other ;  a  combination  which  somehow  yields  the  conception 
of  a  body  exercising  a  power  corresponding  to  that  of  which 
I  am  conscious  in  myself. 
He  thus  21.  What  is  here  supposed  is  a  complex  intellectual  act — 

a<r"t  ^^th  ^^^^  ^^^  above  feeling,  if  we  like  to  call  it  so,  but  not  beyond 
idealism  of  cousciousness.  Mr.  Spencer's  account,  in  short,  of  the  ex- 
^^dH^*^  •  P^^i^^c®  <^f  resistance,  token  as  it  stands,  while  it  feils  to  prove' 
the  existence  of  a  real  world  beyond  consciousness,  or  to  give 
significance  to  that  essentially  unmeaning  phrase,  does  show 
the  experience  which  yields  the  consciousness  of  a  real  world 
to  be  not  such  a  one  as,  in  language  virtually  the  same  with 
that  of  Locke's  idealist  followers,  he  himself  describes.  If 
Berkeley  and  Hume  could  reappear  among  us,  they  might  claim 
a  good  deal  of  the  seventh  part  of  the  ^  Psychology '  as  essen- 
tially their  own.  They  would  seem  to  have  found  a  succes- 
sor with  a  phraseology  indeed  more  copious  than  theirs,  and 
whose  minute  introspection  of  mental  *  cohesions '  they  had 
but  imperfectly  anticipated,  but  who  was  yet  speaking  with 
their  voice.     On  further  study,  however,  they  would  find 

>  [See  below,  p.  634.— £d.] 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         897 

that  this  was  only  his  ^forward  voice/  and  that  his  'back- 
ward voice  was  to  utter  foul  speeches  of  them  and  detract,* 
^  You  agree  with  me/  Berkeley  might  say,  *  that  when  we 
speak  of  the  external  world,  we  are  speaking  of  certain  lively 
ideas  connected  in  a  certain  manner.  You,  indeed,  prefer 
to  call  them  vivid  states  of  consciousness,  but  we  need  not 
quarrel  about  terms.  You  agree  also  that  outward  events 
are  changes  wrought  among  or  upon  these  states  of  con- 
sciousness ;  and  that  our  notion  of  the  power  which  pro- 
duces them  is  derived  from  our  experience  of  such  power  as 
exercised  by  our  own  minds.  If  I  could  but  induce  you  to 
say  that  the  external  force,  which  you  have  admitted  to  con- 
sist in  a  power  of  producing  changes  in  consciousness  and 
to  be  known  only  as  corresponding  to  the  like  power  in  our 
own  mind,  itself  belongs  to  a  mind  which  is  God  I '  Hume, 
on  the  other  side,  might  put  in  a  word  for  himself  with  still 
more  effect.  'You  agree  with  me  that  what  we  call  the 
world  is  a  series  of  impressions,  and  what  we  call  the  mind 
a  series  of  ideas  and  emotions,  which  differ  from  impressions 
in  degree  of  liveliness.*  And  since  you  are  as  clear  as  I  am 
that  these  states  of  consciousness  have  no  continued  exist- 
ence, you  can  scarcely  be  serious  in  holding  that  there  really 
is  such  existence  in  the  world  which  you  admit  to  be  made 
up  of  such  states.  You  see,  too,  that  the  production  of 
change  by  mind  in  body  is  in  fact  the  antecedence  of  certain 
elements  of  the  fainter  series  to  certain  elements  of  the  more 
lively;  just  as  the  production  of  change  by  one  body  in 
another  is  the  antecedence  of  some  elements  to  others  within 
the  more  lively  series.  Only  be  consistent,  and  you  must 
admit  that  inwarJ  power  and  outward  force,  energy  of  mind 
and  energy  of  body,  are  phrases  to  which  the  corresponding 
realities  are  just  these  antecedences,  flus  an  indefinite  ex- 
pectation of  their  recurrence.* 

>  It  shonld  be  observed  in  pasring,  whose  doctrine  requires  ns  to  reckon 
th&t  the  distinction  in  respect  of  live-  *  actiire  energy  as  it  veils  up  from  the 
linees  And  faintness,  as  drawn  by  Hume,  depths  of  our  consciousness'  among 
does  not  lie  between  sensations  on  the  '  the  faint  states.' 
one  side,  and  ideas  and  ejnotums  on  the  The  disturbance  which  the  '  smo- 
other; but  between  impressions,  tions'  cause  in  the  classification  of 
whether  primary  (i.«.  of  sense),  or  states  into  *  vivid '  and  '  faint,*  appears 
secondary  (i.e.  desires  and  emotions),  on  from  a  comparison  of  §  460  of  the 
the  one  side,  and  the  ideas  of  these  on  Princ^les  of  Pfyohology  with  §  43  of 
the  other.  If  the  distinction  is  to  be  the  First  Prineiples— in  particular  page 
made  at  all,  there  is  more  to  be  said  for  it  161,  third  edition, 
in  this  form  than  as  put  by  Mr.  Spencer, 


998 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 


Of  which 
he  mig- 
under- 
stands his 
own  refn- 
tation: 


Confufiing 
conscious- 
ness  for 
which 
there  is 


22.  Against  sach  insinuations  of  the  enemy,  Mr.  Spencer 
practicallj  fortifies  himself,  as  orthodox  chorchmen  adrise  u» 
to  do  nnder  similar  circumstances,  by  simply  repeating  his' 
creed.  He  reiterates  the  fact — there  is  an  object  and  there 
is  a  subject,  there  is  a  self  and  there  is  a  not-self,  there  is 
mind  and  there  is  matter — withoat  apparently  being  aware 
that  the  question  is  not  whether  there  are  such  things,  but 
what  they  are,  and  that  he  has  conceded  the  premisses  from 
which  Hume's  account  of  them  is  derived.  Hume's  expla- 
nation of  them,  it  is  true,  explains  them  away,  and  is  doubt- 
less condemned  by  so  doing.  It  is  incompatible  with  the 
existence  of  a  known  world,  and  Mr.  Spencer's  analysis  of 
the  experience  of  resistance  inyolves  its  contradiction  as 
much  as,  but  no  more  than,  a  valid  theory  of  intelligent 
experience  in  any  of  its  forms  must  do.  But  having  satisfied 
himself  by  consideration  of  this  experience  that  there  are 
such  things  as  '  mind  and  matter,'  he  contents  himself  with 
hurling  this  asseveration  at  the  head  of  the  Humists  without 
considering  its  bearing  on  his  own  doctrine,  which  is  aiso 
theirs,  of  what  mind  and  matter  are.  His  relation  to  Hume 
is  in  brief  this :  Hume,  attempting  to  show  what  mind  and 
matter  are,  did  so  by  a  theory  which  logically  implied  that 
they  were  not;  i.e.  that  there  was  no  real  unity  corre- 
sponding to  either  of  these  names.  Mr.  Spencer  adopts  this 
theory,  or  at  least  repeats  the  propositions  which  contain  it, 
but  puts  alongside  of  it  another  which  implies  that  there 
really  are  such  unities.  He  thus  shows  at  once  that  the 
adopted  theory  is  wrong,  and  that  he  misunderstands  his 
own  refutation  of  it.  He  takes  this  refutation  for  a  proof 
that  there  is  a  world  *  beyond  consciousness,'  whereas  really 
it  is  a  proof  that  consciousness  is  not  what  he  takes  it  to  be. 
It  cannot  at  once  be  what  Mr.  Spencer's  system  requires  it 
to  be,  and  tell  what  his  system  requires  it  to  tell.  If  it  is  to 
yield  the  *  dictum '  of  its  relation  to  an  object,  which  he 
interprets  as  its  announcement  of  a  world  independent  of 
itself,  instead  of  being  a  succession  of  states  produced  by 
such  a  world,  it  must  itself  be  the  condition  of  there  being 
that  world  of  which  it  tells. 

23.  The  truth  is,  that  ^  consciousness '  with  Mr.  Spencer  has 
two  different  meanings,  and  that  his  system  really  turns  on 
an  equivocation  between  them.  It  means  one  thing  when  it 
is  found  to  tell  of  an  objective  world ;  another  thing  when 


MR    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.         8W 

tliis  world  is  shown  to  be  independent  of  it.  So  long  aa  neither 
consciousness  is  understood  to  be  a  mere  succession  of  objecttd^ 
Btates,  it  is  easy  to  show  that  the  objective  world  is  inde-  that  in 
pendent  of  it,  but  the  consciousness  which  can  alone  tell  of  ^e^immiL 
Buch  a  world  is  not  such  a  succession.  We  have  already  nent. 
seen  how,  when  Mr.  Spencer,  after  condemning  at  large  all 
who  question  the  independent  existence  of  the  objective 
world,  comes  to  give  his  own  account  of  it,  he  describes 
what  is  neither  an  independent  existence  nor  even  a  world  at 
all,  but  a  succession — an  ^  aggregate '  which  is  never  aggre- 
gated—of vivid  feelings.  When,  like  Peter's  brothers  in 
the  '  Tale  of  a  Tub/  with  this  brown  loaf  before  us  we  ask 
for  the  promised  mutton,  we  are  told  that  it  is  there  already 
— *  as  true,  good,  natural  mutton  as  any  in  Leadenhall  Street.' 
'  Independent  existence,'  it  seems, '  is  implied  by  the  vivid 
aggregate.'  ^  A  *  root-conception  of  existence  beyond  con- 
sciousness '  is  somehow  given  in  and  with  the  succession  of 
conscious  states,  and  this  through  a  certain  experience  be- 
comes the  conception  ^  of  resistance  plus  some  force  which 
the  resistance  measures.'  But  when  we  look  to  the  account 
given  of  the  experience  which  is  thus  to  determine  the  con- 
ception of  the  relation  between  subject  and  object,  we  find 
it  wholly  different  from  the  experience  in  which  this  distinc- 
tion was  supposed  to  be  given.  That  was  an  experience 
consisting  in  successive  states  of  feeling,  distinguished  as 
more  or  less  vivid ;  this  is  a  consciousness  of  power  as  exer- 
cised by  oneself,  and  measuring  a  like  power  exercised  by 
something  not  oneself.  Mr.  Spencer  does  not  attempt  to 
show  how  one  sort  of  experience  can  *  become  *  the  other — 
how  an  antecedence  of  a  fainter  feeling  to  one  more  vivid 
becomes  a  consciousness  of  antagonism  between  agents  of 
which  just  that  has  to  be  denied  which  is  asserted  of  feel- 
ings. He  simply  at  pleasure  puts  the  one  for  the  other. 
Yet  the  difference  between  tbem  is  no  less  than  that  between 
an  experience  which  does  and  one  which  does  not  reveal  a 
world.  It  is  not,  as  Mr.  Spencer  sometimes  puts  it,  a  dif- 
ference between  a  consciousness  in  which  the  relation  between 
subject  and  object  is  given  less  concretely  and  one  in  which 
it  is  given  more  concretely,  but  between  a  consciousness 
in  which  the  relation  is  not  given  at  all  and  one  in  which  it 
is  given.    In  the  consciousness  which  alone  can  give  it,  the 

*  PHnciplet  ofPtychology,  §  466. 


400  MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND   OBJECT. 

object  is  not  giyen  as  ^  beyond '  this  consciousness,  but  as 
immanent  in  it ;  as  a  determining  factor  of  it,  not  an  un- 
known opposite ;  not  as  independent  of  the  subject,  but  as  a 
correlative,  implying  and  implied  in  it.  It  is  only  through 
equivocation  between  this  sort  of  consciousness  and  another — 
that  fictitious  consciousness  which  the  object  is  indeed  *  be- 
yond,' in  the  sense  that  for  it  neither  subject  nor  object  coald 
exist— that  the  experience  of  resistance  can  be  made  to 
testify  to  a  matter  independent  of  thought,  and  from  which, 
thought  results.  This  will  become  clearer  when  we  consider 
more  in  detail  the  account  which  Mr.  Spencer  gives  of  the 
independence  of  matter. 
Thus  hifl  24.  ^  The  Conception  we  have  of  matter,'  he  tells  us, '  is  a 
TiomoM"  conception  uniting  independence,  permanence,  and  force.* 
'iudepend-  Now,  we  should  be  far  from  admitting  that  this  was  a  suf- 
hi' ,  ^*]*5 ,  ficient  account  of '  matter,'  or  that  *  matter '  and  the  *  object  * 
could  properly  be  taken,  as  he  seems  to  take  them  ^  to  be  equi- 
valent terms.'  We  should  be  equally  far  from  saying  that 
*  mind  and  matter  were  the  same.'  But  it  can  be  shown  that^ 
according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  own  statements,  the  qualities  here 
assigned  to  the  matter,  which  he  identifies  with  the  object, 
are  equally  predicable  of  the  mind,  which  he  identifies  with 
the  subject.  And  these  statements,  which  it  would  not 
concern  us  to  examine  merely  for  Vke  sake  of  convicting 
an  eminent  writer  of  inconsistency,  acquire  a  value  when 
considered  as  involuntary  witnesses  to  the  truth  that  only 
the  consciousness  which  is  an  object  to  itself  can  tell  of  the 
object  misconceived  as  ^beyond'  it,  and  that  thought,  in 
knowing  such  a  matter,  is  so  far  knowing  itself.  That  he 
thinks  of  *  permanence  and  force '  as  attributes  of  mind  no 
less  than  of  matter,  his  whole  theory  of  resistance  testifies. 
^  The  principle  of  continuity,'  he  tells  us,  ^  forming  into  a 
whole  the  faint  states  of  consciousness,  moulding  and  modi- 
fying them  by  some  unknown  energy,  is  distinguished  as  the 
ego.  ...  To  the  principle  of  continuity  manifested  in  the 
nan^ego  there  clings  a  nascent  consciousness  of  force  akin  to 
the  force  evolved  by  the  principle  of  continuity  in  the  egfo.' ' 
When  permanence  and  force  have  thus  been  ascribed  to 
mind  equally  with  matter,  the  *  independence '  of  the  latter 
becomes  the  more  questionable.  On  this  point  it  will  be 
found,  we  think,  that  Mr.  Spencer's  premisses  and  conclusion* 

>  JRriwcipfe*  qf  Pgyckology,  §  470.  «  [See  below,  p.  534.— Ed.] 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  401 

do  not  tallj.  The  conclusion  is  that  matter  is  ^  something 
beyond  consciousness,  which  is  absolutely  independent  of 
consciousness/  but  in  the  premisses  the  independence  of 
matter  merely  means  that  the  *  vivid  aggregate '  of  conscious 
states  is  independent  of  the  ^  faint.'  So  far  from  being,  as 
we  had  been  led  to  expect,  an  independence  of  consciousness 
on  the  part  of  something  other  tlmn  consciousness,  it  turns 
out  to  consist  merely  in  this,  that  the  occurrence  of  any  one 
of  a  set  of  feelings,  distinguished  as  more  lively,  is  not 
contingent  upon  the  occurrence  of  one  of  another  set,  dis- 
tinguished as  less  lively.^  But  as  the  occurrence  of  one  of 
this  latter  set  is  on  its  part  not  contingent  upon  the  occur* 
rence  of  one  more  lively,  the  independence  asserted  in  this 
sense  of  *  matter  *  is  equally  predicable  of  mind.  For  if  the 
*  vivid  aggregate,'  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  is  independent 
of  the '  faint,'  so  likewise  is  the  faint  of  the  vivid.  It,  too,  as 
he  expressively  tells  us,  is  ^  coherent  within  itself,  has  its 
own  antecedents  and  its  own  laws.'  It  is  true  that,  accord- 
ing to  him,  the  one  aggregate  is  ^  absolutely  independent,' 
the  other  only  ^  relatively  or  partially  '  so.  But  this  distinc- 
tion in  favour  of  the  vivid  aggregate  is  afterwards  cancelled 
by  the  account  of  resistance,  which  turns  on  the  fact  that 
changes  in  the  vivid  aggregate  are  initiated  by  changes  in 
the  faint.  To  whatever  qualification,  then,  the  independence 
of  the  faint  aggregate  is  subject,  that  of  the  vivid  must  be 
so  likewise.  We  are  thus  left  with  two  sequences,  each  in 
the  same  sense  independent  of  the  other,  but  we  are  not 
offered  any  mark  of  distinction  between  the  sequence  which 
is  '  matter '  and  the  sequence  which  is  ^  mind,'  except  such 
as  equally  distinguishes  any  two  feelings  differing  in  liveli- 
ness and  not  contingent  the  one  upon  the  other.  If  this 
were  really  what  Mr.  Spencer  meant,  as  it  is  undoubtedly 
what  in  effect  he  says,  all  that  he  urges  against  Hume  could 
be  retorted  more  strongly  against  himself.  He  would  out- 
idealise  Hume  in  Hume's  own  line  of  idealism ;  for  whereas 
with  Hume  impressions  are  at  least  necessarily  precedent  to 
'ideas,'  Mr.  Spencer's  matter,  as  equivalent  to  the  vivid 
aggregate,  has  no  such  prerogative  over  mind,  as  equivalent 
to  the  faint. 

25.  But  there  is  reason  to  think  that  by  the  independence  Intniihlie 
of  matter  Mr.  Spencer  means  something  else  than  what  he  ^^^  ^^ 

>  Prinoipiss  of  Ptyeholoffy,  §$  454,  458,  and  468. 
VOL.  I.  D  n 


402 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 


fHwn  *  in- 
depend- 
ence/ but 
mntiial 
antithesis : 


A  relation 
by  no 
means  de- 
rivable 
from  that 
between 
'rivid'and 
•faint* 


says.  He  does  not  really  believe  either  the  yiyid  or  the 
faint  aggregate  to  be  in  any  case  independent.  When  he 
speaks  of  the  vivid  as  independent,  he  does  not  mean  either 
that  it  is  subject  to  no  determination  proceeding  from  the 
faint,  or  that  it  is  dependent  on  nothing.  The  true  ezplana- 
tion  of  his  language  is  that  he  holds  that  on  which  the  one 
aggregate  depends  to  be  antithetical  to  that  on  which  the 
other  depends.  If  we  are  asked  by  what  title  we  assume 
that  he  does  not  mean  what  he  says,  we  answer  that,  on 
looking  to  the  account  given  of  any  experience  which  he 
ascribes  to  the  ^  vivid  aggregate,'  we  find  two  characteristics 
essential  to  its  being  what  he  takes  it  to  be,  each  of  which 
is  incompatible  with  the  ^  independence '  of  the  aggregate. 
Every  vivid  feeling  of  the  experience  is  determined  by  con- 
nection with  modes  of  consciousness  which,  if  Mr.  Spencer's 
division  is  accepted,  must  fall  to  the  ^  faint  aggregate.'  And 
the  whole  experience  is  dependent  on  something  which  is 
not  one  of  the  conscious  states  forming  the  aggregate,  nor 
all  these  together,  but  is  persistent  throughout  the  sue* 
cession. 

26.  Before  proceeding,  however,  to  examine  one  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  *  vivid'  experiences,  it  is  well  to  say  that  his 
division  of  states  of  consciousness  into  vivid  and  faint  is  one 
which  can  only  be  accepted  under  protest.  That  the 
^  totality  of  consciousness  '  does  not  admit  of  being  divided 
into  '  antithetical  halves '  on  the  basis  of  a  distinction  which 
at  best  is  only  one  of  degree,  must  be  sufficiently  obvious.  The 
apparent  significance  of  the  distinction  is,  in  truth,  only 
derived  from  a  tacit  presupposition  of  the  antithesis  which 
yet,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  account  of  the  matter,  we 
derive  from  it.  Having  already,  for  whatever  reason,  come 
to  divide  our  experiences  into  those  which  are  the  product  of 
outward  things  and  those  which  belong  merely  to  the  mind, 
we  may  then  find  relative  vividness  to  be  characteristic  of 
the  one  and  relative  f aintness  of  the  other ;  though  it  would 
be  truer  to  say  that  to  a  great  part  of  our  mental  experiences 
—those  which  we  call  intellectual  as  opposed  to  the  emotional 
— the  distinction  between  the  faint  and  the  vivid  has  no 
application  at  all.  But  if  we  had  not  the  antithetical  divi- 
sion already  before  our  minds,  there  could  be  nothing  in  the 
constant  transition  from  more  to  less  lively  feeling,  and 
again  from  the  less  lively  to  the  more  so,  to  suggest  it.     If  it 


MR.    SPENCEB    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.        403 

suggested  anything — and  the  possibilily  of  its  suggesting 
anything  really  presupposes  that  self-consciousness  on  the 
part  of  a  subject  distinguishing  itself  from  the  transition 
which,  according  to  the  empirical  theory,  is  part  of  what  is 
sug^gested — it  would  suggest,  not  two  antithetical  existences, 
but  one  existence  of  constantly  varying  intensity.  That 
Mr.  Spencer  himself,  instead  of  determining  the  aggregate 
with  which  an  experience  is  to  be  classed  on  the  ground 
of  the  yiyidness  or  faintness  of  the  experience,  decides  that 
it  is  vivid  or  faint  according  to  a  preconceived  view  of  the 
aggregate  to  which  it  belongs,  appears  from  his  account  of 
those  ^  states  of  the  faint  aggregate  which  set  up  changes  in 
the  vivid.'  In  regard  to  them,  he  admits  that  ^  the  classifica- 
tion by  intensity  fails.'  ^  He  assigns  them  to  the  '  faint  aggre- 
gate '  on  grounds  which,  whatever  they  may  be  worth,  have 
nothing  to  do  with  degree  of  vivacity. 

27.  Subject  to  this  proviso,  let  us  consider,  by  way  of  ex-  His  *vivia 
ample,  the  account  of  the  vivid  experience  on  the  sea-shore  ^Jf*^ 
with  which  Mr.  Spencer  introduces  his  ^  partial  difierentiation  nothing 
of  subject  and  object.'  *    He  describes  himself  as  sitting  on  a  J^'.^^",^ 
beach  with  the  sea-breeze  blowing  in  his  face.      'Sounds  ones: 
from  the  breakers,  motions  of  the  waves  that  stretch  away  to 
the  horizon,  are  at  the  same  time  present ; '  and  he  is  also 
*  aware  of  the  sun's  warmth  and  the  odour  of  sea-weed.' 
Before  him  there  is  a  prospect  of  a  ^  distant  headland  with  a 
white  cliff  and  sweep  of  green  down  above ; '  of  a  pier  to  his 
right,  and  a  cluster  of  boats  anchored  on  his  left.     All  that 
he  thus,  in  common  language,  sees,  hears,  and  smells,  Mr. 
Spencer  regards  as  a  vivid  aggregate  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness.    Part  of  it,  however,  soon  becomes  *  faint.'    A  sea-fog 
is  supposed  to  drift  in,  and  those  'specially-shaped  vivid 
patches,  of  green  and  white,  which  he  distinguished  as  a 
distant  headland,  now  remain  with  him  as  faint  patches, 
having  shapes  and  relative  positions  approximately  the  same; 
and  the  like  holds  with  those  produced  in  him  by  the  pier 
and  boats.'    Now,  if  we  are  to  take  as  a  sample  of  faint 
states  that  consciousness   of  the  headland  which  remains 
after  the  sea-fog  has  interfered  with  the  sight  of  it,  it  is 
clear  that,  apart  from  such  faint  states,  the  experience  which 
Mr.  Spencer  takes  in  the  gross  as  vivid  would  lose  all  its  real 
content.     Abstract  from  'the  vivid  patches  of  green  and 

>  Principles  of  Psychology.  §  460.  >  Ibid.  §  450. 

D  D  2 


404  MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

white  wLich  I  distingnish  as  a  headland '  all  determination 
by  *  ideas '  as  faint  as  these  patches  of  colour  are  supposed 
to  become  in  memory  upon  supervention  of  the  fog,  and  it  is 
distinguished  as  a  distant  headland  no  longer.  Mr.  Spencer 
himself,  to  judge  from  his  statements  elsewhere,  would 
admit  that  its  recognition  as  a  headland  implies  a  reference 
of  the  object  seen  to  a  class,  or  the  ascription  to  it  of  attri- 
butes which,  since  the  shutting  of  the  eyes  makes  no  differ- 
ence to  them,  must,  according  to  his  classification,  be 
reckoned  faint  states  of  consciousness.  But  this  is  not  all. 
We  are  not  to  suppose  that  the  object  seen,  merely  as  a 
'  vivid  state '  or  sensation  and  apart  from  intellectual  action, 
already  has  a  nature,  and  that  all  that  the  intellect  has  to 
do  is,  in  the  act  which  naming  represents,  to  class  it  with 
like  objects  previously  observed.  Intellectual  action  is  neces- 
sary to  constitute  the  individual  object.  All  its  elements, 
as  Mr.  Spencer  supposes  it  at  any  particular  time  to  be 
'  seen,'  would  disappear  with  the  elimination  from  conscious- 
ness at  that  time  of  all  but  *  vivid  states.'  So  far  from  its 
being  a  *  cluster  of  vivid  states,'  as  Mr.  Spencer  apparently 
supposes  not  his  umbrella  merely  but  all  sensible  objects 
about  him  to  be,  it  is  an  impropriety  to  call  it  a  cluster  of 
states  of  consciousness  at  all;  a  further  impropriety  to 
allow  that,  if  it  be  such  a  cluster,  any  part  of  the  cluster  is, 
in  Mr.  Spencer's  sense,  '  vivid ' ;  and  an  impropriety  than 
which  error  can  no  further  go  to  reckon  the  whole  clus- 
ter so. 
I^.  with-  28.  We  will  deal  with  this  worst  impropriety  first.  The 
flcatwn  by  account  given  of  the  perception  of  an  individual  object  by  the 
memory  school  to  which  Mr.  Spencer  belongs,  and  which  there  is 
an  infer-  j^^qj^  ^  Suppose  that  he  accepts,*  is  that  it  consists  in  the 
suggestion  by  a  sensation  of  certain  known  possibilities  of 
sensation,  of  which  through  past  experience  the  given  sen- 
sation has  become  symbolical.  When,  to  return  to  the  in- 
stance mentioned,  I  perceive  a  distant  headland,  what  I 
actually  see  would  be  admitted  to  be  but  a  small  part  of  the 
perception.  Certain  present  sensations — *  vivid  patches' 
of  colour,  specially  coloured  and  shaped — are  supposed  to 
recall  past  experiences  which  have  become  indissolubly 
associated  with  them.  Only  as  qualified  by  these  do  the 
sensations  become  representative  of  objects  which  can  be 

*  Principles  qf  Ptyehohgy^  §  315. 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  406 

recognised  as  of  a  certain  nature — of  the  cliff,  down,  and 
sea,  for  instance — from  which  again,  as  related  in  a  certain 
manner,  results  the  total  impression  of  a  headland.  To 
adapt  this  view  to  Mr.  Spencer's  way  of  speaking,  for  sensa- 
tions we  must  write  *  vivid  states  of  consciousness,'  and, 
instead  of  saying  that  they  become  representative  of  the 
headland  we  must  say  that  they  become  tiie  state,  or  ^cluster 
of  states,'  which  is  the  headland.  Thus  translated,  the 
*  doctrine  of  perception  in  which  all  psychologists  concur '  ^ 
implies  that  only  as  qualified  by  association  with  remem- 
bered facts,  or  by  inference  to  what  might  be,  but  is  not  now, 
experienced,  do  the  *  vivid  patches  of  green  and  white,'  &c. 
become  the  state  of  consciousness  called  the  headland,  or 
any  vivid  states  become  the  objects  which  make  up  Mr. 
Spencer's  *  vivid  aggregate.'  Now  memory  and  inference 
according  to  his  classification  must  fall  to  the  '  faint  agg^re- 
gate.'  It  may  be  objected  indeed  that  the  qualification  of 
vivid  states,  necessary  to  constitute  the  perceived  thing,  is 
given  not  by  memory  but  by  remembered  facts  which  once 
were  sensations,  not  by  inference  but  by  facts  inferred  which 
are  possibilities  of  sensation.  Such  an  objection,  however, 
would  be  inappropriate  when,  under  Mr.  Spencer's  direction, 
we  are  considering  the  perceived  object  as  a  cluster  of  states 
of  consciousness,  into  which  we  clearly  cannot  regard  facts 
inferred  or  remembered  as  entering  in  distinction  from  the 
memory  and  inference.  Nor,  if  appropriate,  would  it  affect 
our  conclusion,  since  neither  the  fact  that  a  sensation  once 
happened,  nor  the  possibility  of  its  happening  again,  are 
themselves  sensations.  Our  conclusion  then  must  be  that, 
according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  own  theory  of  perception,  *  vivid 
states  of  consciousness '  must  be  qualified  by  '  fiiint '  ones  in 
order  to  form  the  objects  which  he  ascribes  to  the  *  vivid 
aggregate ; '  that  if  these  objects  are  to  be  reckoned  clusters 
of  states  of  consciousness  at  all,  they  are  clusters  into  which 
faint  states  enter  as  qualifying  the  vivid,  and  into  which  the 
vivid  states  enter  only  as  so  qualified. 

29.  Thus  if  we  are  to  follow  Mr.  Spencer  in  holding  that  ^®  f^^^^Jj^.^ 
'  vivid  states  of  consciousness ' — in  plain  English,  sensations  because  he 
— are  elements  in  the  *  clusters'  which  we  call  sensible  makes  sen- 
things  or  objects  of  the  real  world,  we  are  logically  for-  conacioui- 
bidden  from  holding  with  him  that  such  states  are  inde- 

*  PnncipU$  of  Pvyehology,  §  315. 


406         MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

s^ibie      P^Jident  of  the  *  faint.'     If  vivid  states  contribute  to  form 
objectn       objects  at  all,  they  do  so  as  determined  by  faint  ones ;  and 
if  the  *  vivid  aggregate '  is  to  be  identified  with  the  objec- 
tive world,  we  must  say  that  only  qualification  by  the  '  faint 
aggregate '  or  subject  renders  it  such  a  world  at  aU.     Can 
we  explain  how  Mr.  Spencer,  in  the  face  of  his  own  theory 
of  perception,  comes  to  think  otherwise  P    We  answer  that 
it  is  through  confusion  between  an  event  in  the  way  of  sen- 
sation,  which  no  doubt    happens   quite    irrespectively  of 
memory,  imagination,  or  conception  on  the  part  of  the  per^ 
son  to  whom  it  happens  and  in  that  sense  is  independent  of 
'  faint  states,'  and  the  consciousness  or  existence  of  a  sensi- 
ble object  or  quality.*     *  In  broad  procession,'  he  tells  us, 
*  the  vivid  states — sounds  from  the  breakers,  the  wind,  the 
vehicles  behind  me,  changing  patches  of  colour  from  the 
waves,  pressures,  odours,  and  the  rest — move  on  abreast, 
unceasing  and  unbroken,  wholly  without  regard  to  anything 
else  in  my  consciousness.'  *    Unfortunately  the  *  vivid  states,' 
of  which  this  assertion  is  true,  are  not  of  a  kind  with  the 
instances  given ;  nor  can  any  ^  clustering '  of  them  consti- 
tute either  an  act  of  perception  or  an  object  perceived.     It 
is  only  through  the  illusion  of  statements,  like  Mr.  Spencer's, 
as  *  broad '  as  the  procession  which  he  describes,  tiiat  any 
one  is  brought  to  think  they  can.    We  talk  of  certain  sensa* 
tions,  for  instance,  as  sounds  from  the  breakers,  as  changing 
patches  of  colour  from  the  waves,  without  reflecting  that 
merely  as  sensations — passing  states  of  feeling — apart  from 
'regard  to  something  else  in  my  consciousness'  which  at 
any  rate  is  not  a  sensation,  they  are  not  for  consciousness 
sounds  from  the  breakers  or  changing  patches  of  colour  at 
all.    '  Neither  the  past  experience  under  the  influence  of 
which  a  certain   sensation  of  sight  is   translated  into   a 
breaker,  nor  that  which  leads  us  to  connect  a  certain  sound 
with  the  sight  thus  translated,  can  be  more  vivid  than  the 
state  which  succeeds  the  sight  when  the  sea-fog  has  shut 
the  breakers  from  view^  and  which  Mr.  Spencer  counts  faint. 
As  for  the  translation  and  connection  themselves — the  acts 
of  intellectual  synthesis  and  inference  by  which   known 

'  We  write  coDscioosness  or  existence,  aggregate  which  he  ezpresslj  declares 

for  we  shall  find  in  the  sequel  that  Mr.  to  be  one  of  conscious  states. 
Spencer  does  not  scruple  to  include  ex-  '  Principles  of  Faychology,  §  464. 

isieuoes  out  of  consciousness  within  an 


MR    SPENCER    ON    SUBJEC?!   AND    OBJECT.  407 

possibilities  of  sensation  are  combined  in  an  object  and  bj 
wliich  the  sound  becomes  the  sound  of  this  object— whether 
^  states  of  consciousness'  at  all  or  no,  it  is  clear  bat  some- 
thing else  than  a  ^  vivid  state '  renders  them  possible.  In 
like  manner  successive  sensations  of  colour  are  one  thing, 
<  changing  patches  of  colour  from  the  waves '  quite  another. 
"With  the  occurrence  of  the  sensations  nothing  else  in  my 
consciousness  need  have  to  do,  but  something  else  in  it — the 
persistent  something  which  consciousness  of  change  pre- 
supposes— has  everything  to  do  with  their  becoming  that 
which  the  description  quoted  assumes  them  to  be. 

30.  How  far  Mr.  Spencer  in  fact  is  from  meaning  by  vivid  But  a  buo- 

states  of  consciousness  those  occurrences  of  sensation  which  g^g^tjo^ 

can  alone  be  truly  said  to  be  independent  of  operations  that  cannot 

he  would  ascribe  to  the  subject,  appears  from  his  language  ^^  *"je 

about  the  antecedents  of  such  states.     ^  When  for  any  con-  independ- 

sequent  in  the  vivid  series  we  can  perceive  the  antecedent,  ^^^^^  * 

that  antecedent  exists  in  the  vivid  series.  .  •  .  Thus,  in  the 

vivid  series,  after  the  changing  forms  and  colours  which,  as 

nnited,  I  call  a  curling  breaker,  there  comes  a  sound  made 

by  its  fall  on  the  beach.'  *    Now  to  say  that  both  antecedent 

and  consequent  *  exist  in  the  vivid  series ' — if  this  means 

that  series  of  events  in  the  way  of  feeling  which  can  alone 

be  truly  said  to  be  independent  of  the  faint  aggregate — is  a 

contradiction  in  terms.     Coincident  feehngs  may  so  exist, 

but  not  those  related  as   antecedent  and  consequent.     If 

the  consequent  be  a  sensation  now  occurring,  the  perceived 

antecedent  cannot  be  so  too,  unless  of  two  events  one  can 

both  follow  the  other  and  accompany  it.     It  may  be  replied 

perhaps  that  we  are  here  arguing  from  a  mere  hastiness  of 

expression  on  Mr.  Spencer's  part,  which  led  him  to  put  a 

present  for  a  past ;  that  by  both  antecedent  and  consequent 

he  means  sensations  as  they  occur,  and  that  though  the 

antecedent  is  no  longer  vivid  when  the  consequent  follows,  it 

previously  was  so ;  that  thus  it  did  exist  in  the  vivid  series, 

though  it  does  not.     Mr.  Spencer,  however,  could  scarcely 

accept  this  rendering  of  his  thought.    His  polemic  against 

Hume  turns  on  the  impropriety  of  using  *  existence '  in  a 

sense  implying  *  absence   of  persistence,'  ^  as  it  certainly 

would  be  Uhcd  if  of  a  mere  sensation  it  were  said  that  it 

did  exist.     So  far  as  the  loose  abundance  of  his  phraseology 

'  Principles  qf  Psychology,  §  466.         *  Bnd.  §  467. 


408         MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT. 

allows  OS  to  judge, '  existence  in  the  viyid  aggregate '  means 
with  him  the  same  thing  as  being  a  ^  member  of  the  vivid 
aggregate,'  and  an  aggregate  or  member  of  an  aggregate  no 
sequent  occurrences  of  feeling,  by  themselves,  can  form. 
Oidj  so  far  as  thej  become  elements  of  a  conception,  in 
which  they  are  no  longer  sequent,  can  they  become  an 
aggregate  or  parts  of  one.  As  little  can  such  successive 
occurrence  form  the  perception  of  antecedence  which  in  the 
passage  before  us  Mr.  Spencer  has  in  view.  An  antecedent, 
perceived  as  an  antecedent,  must  be  included  in  one  concep- 
tion with  the  consequent,  and,  as  so  included,  cannot  be 
that  state  of  consciousness — a  sensation  at  the  time  of  its 
occurrence — ^which  terminates  when  the  state  to  which  it  is 
antecedent  begins,  and  which  is  alone  unaffected  by  the 
mind.  In  short,  to  say  that  two  states  of  consciousness  are 
perceived  to  be  related  as  antecedent  and  consequent,  and  to 
say  that  either  of  them  is  ^  independent  of  the  fiaint  aggre- 
gate,' are  incompatible  propositions. 
NordoMhd  31.  If  any  doubt  as  to  Mr.  Spencer's  meaning  remained,  his 
"^"^th°"'  illustration,  quoted  above,  must  make  it  quite  clear  that  the 
as  thus  in-  states  of  cousciousuess  which  he  has  in  view  are  not  sensa- 
dependent  tions  as  they  occur,  but  sensations  as  thoxight  of — sensible 
objects,  formed  by  conceived  relations  between  feelings,  not 
feelings  as  undetermined  by  thought  or  ^  independent.'  The 
antecedent,  which  he  instances,  is  an  object  formed  by  the 
union  of  *  changing  forms  and  colours.'  That  such  an  ob- 
ject can  be  a  single  sensation  no  one  will  for  a  moment  sup- 
pose. That  it  is  not  a  mere  group  of  sensations,  experienced 
at  the  same  time,  will  be  clear  to  any  one  who  reflects  that 
a  coincident  occurrence  of  several  sensations  cannot  be  also 
a  consciousness  of  change  from  one  to  the  other.  Does  it 
then  consist  in  several  successive  sensations  P  It  is  clearly 
as  impossible  that  successive  events  of  any  kind  should  form 
such  an  object,  as  it  is  necessary  that  they  shoxQd  occur  in 
order  to  its  formation.  It  could  only  seem  possible  to  one 
who  confused  a  succession  of  states  of  consciousness  with 
that  consciousness  of  succession  which  is  its  very  opposite. 
If  for  no  other  reason  than  because  a  consciousness  of  suc- 
cession is  implied  in  the  conception  of  a  changing  object,  a 
consciousness  consisting  of  a  succession  of  states  could 
never  compass  such  a  conception*  The  *  antecedent,'  then, 
in  Mr.  Spencer's  illiistration  is  neither  a  sensation,  nor 


MR.    SPENCER    ON    SUBJECT    AND    OBJECT.  40u 

seToral  sensations  coincident  or  sequent.  As  an  object  for 
conscioosness — and  it  is  as  sach  alone  that  his  account  of 
the  series  in  question  allows  us  to  consider  it — it  is  formed 
bj  the  thought  of  events  in  the  way  of  sensation  which  have 
occurred  successively,  but  are  for  thought  equally  present. 
If  as  thus  equally  present,  as  mutually  qualifying  members 
of  a  conception,  they  are  still  to  be  counted  members  of  the 
▼ivid  series,  then  it  must  be  admitted  that  this  series  de- 
pends, for  being  what  it  is,  on  some  act  of  consciousness 
which  is  not  included  in  it. 


410    MR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 


PAET  n. 


ICB.  SP£NOEB  ON  THE  INDEPBKDEVOE  OF  ICATl^EB. 


Do  'vivid 
aggregatce* 
enter  at  all 
into  the 
objective 
world? 


/#.  is  sen- 
sation,  as 
such,  an 


32.  In  the  preceding  Part  we  entered  on  an  inqnirj  into  the 
*  Independence  *  of  matter  or  the  object,  as  expounded  by 
Mr.  Spencer  in  the  seventh  Part  of  his  *  Psychology.'  He 
there  identifies  the  object  with  a  certain  aggregate  of  vivid 
states  of  consciousness,  which  he  makes  out  to  be  inde- 
pendent of  another  aggregate,  consisting  of  faint  states,  and 
identified  with  the  subject.  We  ventured  to  express  a  doubt 
whether,  notwithstanding  his  express  statements  to  that 
effect,  his  view  of  the  independence  of  the  object  was  thus 
fairly  expressed,  on  the  twofold  ground  that  the  ^  vivid 
aggregate,'  as  he  describes  it  in  detail,  is  not  really  inde- 
pendent of  what  he  describes  as  the  ^  faint,'  and  that  the 
constituents  of  the  objective  world  cannot  properly  be  re- 
duced to  vivid  states  of  consciousness  or  to  *  clusters '  of  such 
states.  Enough  was  said  to  show  that  if  we  are  to  accept 
Mr.  Spencer's  account  of  the  objects  of  the  sensible  world 
as  clusters  of  states  of  consciousness,  and  his  division  of 
these  states  into  the  vivid  and  the  faint,  we  must  at  least 
maintain  that  vivid  states  enter  into  the  objects  only  in 
combination  with,  and  as  qualified  by,  faint  ones,  and  in 
dependence  upon  an  intellectual  action  which,  whatever  it 
may  be,  is  certainly  not  a  vivid  state.  It  remains  to  be  seen 
next  whether  ^  vivid  states '  enter  at  all  into  the  objective 
world,  as  such — into  the  *  things '  or  *  phenomena '  which  we 
are  said  to  perceive ;  and  finally,  whether  any  states  of  con- 
sciousness so  enter  in  a  sense  in  which  the  distinction  between 
the  vivid  and  the  faint  applies  to  them.  We  shall  then  be 
nearer  a  conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  the  independence 
and  persistency  which  Mr.  Spencer  ascribes  to  matter. 

83.  Let  us  revert  to  one  of  Mr.  Spencer's  illustrations,  which 
we  were  considering  in  the  previous  article.    *  When  for  any 


MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER  411 

consequent  in  the  Tivid  series  we  can  perceive  the  antecedent,  element  in 
that  antecedent  exists  in  the  vivid  series.  .  .  .  Thus,  in  the  ^o"?^ 
vivid  series,  after  the  changing  forms  and  colours  which,  as 
united,  I  call  a  curling  breaker,  there  comes  a  sound  made 
by  its  fall  on  the  beach.*  We  have  already  endeavoured  to 
show  that  the  perceived  antecedent  in  this  instance,  the 
*  curling  breaker,*  is  not  wholly  or  merely  a  collection  of 
vivid  states.  But  is  any  element  of  it  a  vivid  state  P  And 
can  the  perceived  consequent,  ^  the  sound  made  by  its  fall  on 
the  beach,'  be  rightly  considered  a  vivid  state  either  P  These 
are  in  fact  questions  as  to  the  relation  between  Sensation  and 
Perception.  That  there  is  some  necessary  relation  between 
them — ^that  no  object  can  be  perceived  without  sensation, 
that  a  man  must  have  felt  in  order  to  perceive — we  shall  not 
dispute,  but  this  relation  maybe  understood  in  very  diflferent 
ways.  Those  who  woidd  admit  that  sensible  objects — 
breakers,  headlands,  umbrellas,  &c. — are  wrongly  regarded 
as  ^  clusters  of  vivid  states,*  independent  of  faint  ones,  and 
that  a  confusion  between  sensation  and  perception  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  mistake,  would  still  be  apt  to  maintain  that 
sensation  was  an  element  in  perception  and  that  vivid  states, 
though  not  constituting  the  objects  we  perceive,  were  yet 
necessarily  included  in  them.  Otherwise  it  is  supposed  there 
would  be  no  diflference  between  an  object  perceived  and  one 
merely  conceived,  nor  would  there  be  any  meaning  in  the 
verification  of  conceptions  by  reduction  to  possible  percep- 
tions. But  is  this  a  true  iccount  of  the  matter?  We  shall 
find  reason,  on  the  contrary,  for  holding  that,  whereas  per- 
ception in  its  simplest  form  is  already  a  consciousness  of 
relation,  a  sensation  neither  is  so,  nor,  remaining  a  mere 
sensation,  can  become  one  of  the  related  elements  of  which 
in  every  perception  there  is  a  consciousness. 

84.  The  first  part  of  the  thesis  here  advanced— that  all  per-  No ;  •  facte 
ception   is  consciousness    of   relation- -will    probably   find  ^per.'°*' 
general  acceptance.    Perception,  it  will  be  admitted,  is  of  ceived  are 
fects — a  perceived  object  is  resoluble  into  certain  facts — and  "^^^f^ 
facts  consist  in  relations.     But  upon  what  ground,  it  will  be 
asked,  can  we  doubt  that  a  sensation  may — not  to  say  must — 
enter  into  such  a  relation  as  one  of  its  constituents  P    When, 
feeling  a  pain  or  pleasure  of  heat,  I  perceive  it  to  be  con- 
nected with  the  action  of  approaching  the  fire,  am  I  not 
perceiving  a  relation  of  which  one  constituent,  at  any  rate. 


412  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OP  MATTER. 

is  a  simple  sensation  9  The  true  answer  is,  No.  That  which 
is  perceived  to  be  related  to  the  action  mentioned  is  not  a 
sensation,  bat  the  fact  that  a  sensation  is  felt — a  fact  to 
which  the  designation  ^  vivid/  appropriate  to  the  sensation, 
is  inappropriate.  If,  in  order  to  make  sure  of  the  existence 
of  the  relation,  I  try  walking  backwards  and  forwards,  out 
of  the  range  of  the  fire's  heat  and  into  it  again,  the  related 
facts  are  equally  before  my  mind  all  the  time.  It  is  not  the 
case  that  one  of  them  vanishes  from  consciousness  and  returns 
again,  as  would  be  the  case  if  one  of  them  were  the  sensation 
which  ceases  when  I  have  withdrawn  to  a  certain  distance 
from  the  fire.  On  the  contrary,  the  consciousness  of  it  as  a 
related  fact  becomes  most  dear  just  when,  with  a  last  st^p 
backward  from  the  fire,  the  feeling  of  warmth  passes  away 
— clearness  of  perception  increasing  as  vividness  of  sensation 
grows  less.  We  conclude,  then,  that  ^fectsof  feeling,'  as 
perceived,  are  not  feelings  as  felt ;  that,  though  perception 
presupposes  feeling,  yet  the  feeling  only  survives  in  percep- 
tion as  transformed  by  a  consciousness,  other  than  feeling, 
into  a  fact  which  remains  for  that  consciousness  when  the 
feeling  has  passed.  If  it  is  suggested  that  consistency  will 
require  us  to  ascribe  a  like  consciousness  to  many  of  the 
animals,  it  will  be  suflBcient  to  reply  that  this,  if  true,  would 
be  no  valid  objection  to  a  conclusion  founded  on  an  accurate 
analysis  (if  it  be  so)  of  our  own  experience.  We  must  re- 
member, however,  that  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose,  because 
the  burnt  dog  shuns  the  fire,  that  he  perceives  any  relation 
between  it  and  the  pain  of  being  burnt.  A  sequence  of  one 
feeling  upon  another  is  not  a  consciousness  of  relation  between 
them,  much  less  of  relation  between  facts  which  they  repre- 
sent. The  dog's  conduct  may  be  accounted  for  by  the  simple 
sequence  of  an  imagination  of  pain  upon  a  visual  sensation, 
resembling  one  which  actual  pain  has  previously  followed. 
There  may  be  cases  of  canine  behaviour  which  could  with 
di£Sculty  be  explained  in  this  way,  but,  till  dogs  can  talk, 
what  data  have  we  on  which  to  found  another  explanation  9 
ti^e^m-  ^^'  '^^^  ^^^  ^^  perception  just  considered,  however,  is  by 

plest  ^ts,  no  means,  it  may  be  said,  the  simplest  possible.   It  is  a  percep- 
•ubjectivd    *^^^  ^^  relation  between  two  distinct  phenomena.     May  not 
each  of  these  be  separately  perceived,  and,  as  so  perceived, 
would  it  not  be  merely  a  sensation — a  state  of  consciousness 
fitly  called  vivid?    In  answering  this  question  we  must  first 


MB.    SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  413 

ask  another :  What  would  these  perceptions  severaUj  be  9 
Apparently,  the  perception  that  I  am  warm,  and  the  visual 
perception  of  the  fire.  As  to  the  former  of  these,  its  dis- 
tinction from  the  sensation  of  warmth  would  be  recognised, 
on  occasion,  by  Mr.  Spencer  himself.  In  exposing  the  fallacy 
of  the  '  postulate '  with  which  he  strangely  supposes  that  ^  all 
metaphysical  reasoning  sets  out' — viz.,  that  *we  are  pri- 
marily conscious  only  of  our  sensations ' — he  rightly  insists 
on  the  difference  between  '  having  a  sensation  and  being  con- 
scious of  having  a  sensation.' '  To  feel  warm,  then,  is  not 
the  same  as  to  perceive  that  I  am  wg.rm,  or  that  my  body  is 
so.  The  perception  is  of  something  qualified  by  the  feeling, 
or  of  the  feeling  as  a  change  from  a  previous  state.  Whether 
that  which  is  qualified,  or  which  is  the  subject  of  the  change, 
is  or  is  not  distinctly  conceived  as  inward  or  as  outward,  as 
self  or  not-self,  makes  no  difference  to  the  fact  that  in  the 
I)erception  the  feeling  is  no  longer  what  it  is  as  a  feeling,  but 
takes  its  character  from  a  relation  to  something  else — it  may 
be  to  what  has  been  previously  felt — established  by  a  con- 
sciousness which,  because  it  is  a  consciousness  of  change, 
cannot  itself  be  one  of  the  feelings  that  form  the  changes. 

86.  Let  us  now  turn  to  the  other  related  phenomenon  in  Orobjeo- 
our  instance — the  fire ;  to  this  as  it  maybe  supposed  to  be  at  ^^'j^uL* 
first  seen,  before  the  association  with  it  of  ideas  derived  fereipibUe 
from  other  senses  than  that  of  sight.     Is  sensation  an  ele-  does*  not" 
mcnt  in  this  object,  or  in  the  perception  of  it  P    Granted,  it  contain, 
may  be  said,  that  in  all  cases  of  perception  which  belong  to  **°^'"®'^ 
our  traceable  experience  there  is  a  greater  or  less  contribu- 
tion of  inference,  yet  there  must  have  been  perceptions  prior 
to  the  inferences  and  on  which  they  were  founded.    Granted, 
again,  that  all  ordinary  perception  is  recognition,  still  there 
must  have  been  a  perception  prior  to  recognition  in  order 
that  there  may  be  anything  to  recognise.     Is  not  then  the 
perception  which  must  precede  inference  and  recognition 
indistinguishable  from  sensation,  and  does  not  such  a  sensa- 
tion survive  in  the  perception,  combining  also  inference  and 
recognition,  which  I  experience  as  I  sit  with  my  eyes  on  that 
fire,  or  with  my  hand  on  this  umbrella  ?    Is  it  not  an  element 
along  with  conceived  *  possibilities  of  sensation '  in  the  phe- 
nomenon I  perceive  9  The  answer  to  these  questions  depends 
on  our  view  of  what  may  be  called  the  minimum  percipiUle. 

*  Principles  of  Psychology,  §§  404  and  406. 


414  MR  SPENCER  ON  TBDE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

If  this  necessarily  involves  some  relation  without  which  there 
wonld  be  nothing  to  be  perceived,  and  if,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  state  of  consciousness  called  sensation,  except  as  having 
ceased  to  be  so  through  the  action  of  something  else,  can 
neither  be  a  relation  nor  a  constituent  of  relation,  then  the 
questions  are  already  answered  in  the  negative.  The  con- 
trary persuasion  is  the  result  of  our  having  no  words  to 
express  sensations  proper,  except  those  already  assigned  to 
the  perception  of  sensible  objects.  Only  because  we  do  more 
than  feel — only  because  we  think  in  feeling,  and  thus  feel 
objects — ^have  we  any  need  of  words.  Hence  we  have  talked 
of  seeing  and  toucldng  things  long  before  we  have  reflected 
on  the  visual  and  tactual  feelings  which  are  the  conditions  of 
our  seeing  and  touching  them.  When  we  come  thus  to 
reflect,  we  have  no  words  for  the  feelings  but  the  same  which 
we  have  applied  to  the  perceptions  conditioned  by  but  essen- 
tially difi^erent  from  them ;  and  under  the  illusion  caused  by 
this  usage,  we  are  brought  to  think  that  the  visual  and 
tactual  sensations  are  equivalent  to  the  perceptions  which  we 
call  by  the  same  names.  It  requires,  therefore,  a  certain 
effort  to  convince  ourselves  that  it  is  possible  to  have  a  visual 
sensation  without  seeing  anything,  and  tactual  sensation 
without  being  conscious  of  touching  anything;  and,  con- 
versely, that  what  I  am  said  to  see  never  is  or  includes  a 
visual  sensation,  nor  what  I  am  said  to  touch  a  tactual  sen- 
sation. 
Aeenaation  ^'^'  ^®  ^^^  1^^^  ^*  *^®  assertion  psychologists  will 
can  hare  scarcely  dispute.  The  difference  between  the  mere  sensation 
rei^ed^  ^'  ^^^  *^®  sensation  attended  to  is  generally  recognised.  When 
elements,  a  man  sits  in  a  fit  of  abstraction  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  the 
^^^^e^  ed  "^^^^^^>  ^®  ^^^^  nothing,  though  there  is  the  same  *  image 
object  on  the  retina '  as  there  is  when  he  is  aware  of  the  lamp-post 
must  have,  jj^  front  of  it.  As  we  commonly  say,  the  image  is  there,  but 
not  attended  to.  Strictly  speaking,  however,  in  the  state  of 
abstraction  supposed,  the  affection  of  the  retina  is  not  an 
image  at  all,  in  the  sense  which  we  are  apt  to  attach  to  the 
word,  as  a  conveyance  to  consciousness  of  some  likeness  of  an 
object.  It  is  so  only  when  interpreted  as  representing  some- 
thing, and  for  the  person  in  the  fit  of  abstraction  it  is  not  so 
interpreted.  For  him  it  is  an  image  only  in  that  sense  in 
which  the  reflection  of  an  object  in  a  mirror  would  be  an 
image  in  the  absence  of  any  consciousness  of  relation  between 


MR.   SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  415 

it  and  the  object.  The  affection  of  the  retina  by  rays  of 
light  proceeding  from  certain  points  is  not  in  itself  a  recog- 
nition of  the  points  from  which  the  rays  proceed,  or  of 
relation  between  them.  Yet,  from  speaking  of  the  affection 
as  an  image,  we  are  apt  to  think  of  it  as  if  it  were  such  a 
recognition.  Hence  onr  habit  of  overlooking  the  essential 
difference  between  the  ^  phenomenon '  as  it  issues  from  the 
process  of  attention — the  proper  object  of  perception — and 
the  sensation  which  precedes  that  process,  or  any  of  the 
sensations  which  accompany  it,  including  the  last.  The  sen- 
sation has  no  parts,  or  related  elements,  as  the  phenomenon 
has.  Any  notion  to  the  contrary  can  only  arise  from  a  con- 
fasion  either  between  a  sensation  and  its  organ — between  the 
retina,  for  instance,  of  which  manifold  parts  are  excited  when 
we  see  anything,  and  the  vision  itself — or  between  sensation 
and  the  sensible  thing.  A  plurality  of  objects,  or  of  parts 
of  an  object,  which  T  am  said  to  see  at  once,  is  a  plurality 
for  consciousness  only  in  virtue  of  a  twofold  intellectual  act. 
In  the  first  place,  upon  the  simple  visual  sensation  there 
must  have  supervened  successive  acts  of  attention,  in  which 
what  by  anticipation  are  called  the  parts  of  the  luminous 
area  are  traversed  (we  say  ^  by  anticipation '  because  it  is 
only  through  the  process  of  attention  that  for  consciousness 
they  become  such  parts) ;  and,  secondly,  upon  these  succes- 
sive acts  there  must  have  supervened  a  synthesis  by  which 
the  elements,  successively  detached  in  the  acts  of  attention, 
are  held  together  in  negation  of  the  succession  as  coexisting 
parts  of  a  whole.  These  elements  are  not  elements  of  the 
original  sensation,  which  must  have  been  constantly  replaced 
by  others  as  the  eye  moves  during  the  process  of  attention, 
nor  of  any  of  those  which  have  succeeded  it.  They  are  ele- 
ments of  something  by  which  these  sensations  of  light  and 
colour  are  accounted  for.  Nor  on  the  other  hand,  do  any  of 
these  sensations  form  such  elements.  The  several  sensations 
which  are  received  as  the  eye  traverses  any  area  of  vision  are 
not  parts  of  that  area.  As  this  area  itself  is,  for  conscious- 
ness, the  object  by  which  a  visual  sensation  is  accounted  for, 
conceived  simply  as  extended,  so  its  parts  are  the  objects  by 
which  the  sensations,  arising  upon  motion  of  the  eye  during 
the  process  of  attention,  are  accounted  for,  conceived  in  a 
similar  way. 
88.  It  appears,  then,  that  perception  in  its  simplest  form — 


416  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OP  MAITER: 

Nor  does  in  a  form  which  may  be  snpposed  prior  to  any  reference  of  an 
tioi?^*'^'"*^  object  to  a  class  or  any  inference  to  possibilities  of  sensation — 
between  perception  as  the  first  sight  or  touch  of  an  object  in  which 
•  faint '^"^^  nothing  but  what  is  seen  or  touched  is  recognised— neither 
apply  to  is  nor  contains  sensation.  This  is  true  of  it  in  each  of  its 
objwt"  stages.  It  is  true  of  that  original  interpretation  of  the  sen- 
sation as  a  change,  which  excites  the  attention  necessary  to 
discover  what  the  change  or  thing  changed  is,  and  which 
must  be  other  than  the  sensation  so  interpreted.  It  is  tme 
again  of  that  process  of  attention  itself  in  which  momentarily 
changing  sensations  become  facts  determined  by  comparison 
with  other  experience.  It  is  true,  finally,  of  the  phenomenon 
or  ^  total  impression ' — ^the  whole  of  related  parts,  or  mutually 
qualified  elements — which  results.  If,  then,  Mr.  Spencer's 
vivid  aggregate  means  the  world  of  sensible  objects,  as  the 
instances  which  he  gives  of  its  components  require  us  to 
suppose,  we  must  deny  not  only  that  vivid  states  of  conscious- 
ness, according  to  the  only  intelligible  meaning  of  that  phrase, 
enter  into  its  composition  as  independent  of  other  mental 
action,  but  that  they  enter  into  it  at  all.  It  is  not,  how- 
ever, for  that  reason  to  be  supposed  that  it  consists  of  faint 
stat<es.  The  distinction  between  faintness  and  vividness 
does  not  apply  at  all  to  such  objects,  or  to  their  elements  or 
relations.  If  it  did,  as  there  are  indefinite  degrees  of  vividness 
and  faintness,  so  each  object,  and  each  related  element  of 
the  object,  would  be  susceptible  of  being  indefinitely  more  or 
less  what  it  is,  while  at  some  unascertainable  point  in  the 
scale  of  diminished  intensity  it  would  pass  from  an  '  objec- 
tive *  into  a  merely  *  subjective '  existence.  If  Mr.  Spencer*s 
umbrella,  for  instance,  were  what  he  calls  it,  *  a  cluster  of 
vivid  states  of  consciousness,'  and  no  less  if  it  were  a  cluster 
of  faint  ones,  it  would  be  liable  to  be  more  or  less  of  an 
umbrella,  as  the  vividness  or  faintness  altered  in  degree; 
and,  if  his  theory  is  to  hold,  there  must  be  some  point  in 
the  gradual  abatement  of  liveliness  at  which,  from  being  a 
real  or  perceived  umbrella,  it  would  become  an  imaginary 
or  merely  conceived  one.  No  doubt  it  does  afiect,  and  is  per- 
ceived as  affecting,  the  sense  more  or  less  vividly,  but  the 
vivacity  or  faintness  of  this  affection  is  not  a  vivacity  or  fEunt- 
ness  of  the  object  or  of  its  qualities. 
dthJ^a'  ^®'  ^^  ^  *^®  primary,  or,  in  Mr.  Spencer's  language, 
(net,  or  a     '  statical '  qualities,  this  will  scarcely  be  disputed.   No  one  will 


MR   SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  417 

seriously  say  that  the  figure  or  motion  of  a  sensible  object,  possibility 
either  in  reality  or  as  perceived,  are  states  of  conscionsness  to  °ei^*p°of 
which  the  designation  of  vivid  or  faint  is  applicable.  In  regard  these  can 
to  the  secondary,  or  *  dynamical  'qualities,  more  hesitation  may  ^^^^  **'' 
be  felt.    Is  not  green  colour,  it  may  be  asked,  a  quality  of  the 
umbrella,  and  is  it  not  at  the  same  time  a  state  of  conscious- 
ness, which  admits  of  being  more  or  less  vivid  P    We  answer 
that^  in  the  sense  in  which  the  green  colour  is  a  vivid  state 
of  consciousness,  it  is  not  a  quality  of  an  object,  not  a  fact, 
not  a  relation,  not  perceived.    The  sensible  qualities  of  a 
perceived  object  consist  either  in  possibilities  of  producing 
sensation,  or  in  the  facts  that  such  and  such  sensations  are 
being  produced ;  and  neither  the  possibility  nor  the  fact  of 
a  sensation  being  produced,  whether  the  sensation  be  vivid 
or  faint,  is  itself  vivid  or  faint.    It  is  true  that  the  perceiving 
consciousness,  in  an  unenlightened  person,  does  not  thus  in- 
terpret the  sensible  qualities  which  it  ascribes  to  objects. 
It  knows  nothing  of  the  distinction  between  sensstions  and 
their  formal  causes.     It  supposes  the  green  colour  to  belong 
to  the  umbrella  irrespectively  of  its  relation  either  to  light 
or  to  the  eye.     But  it  is  a  fallacy  to  say  on  that  account 
that  for  such  a  consciousness  the  sensation  is  the  quality 
perceived.     An  ignorance  of  the  quality's  relation  to  sense 
does  not  mean  its  identification  with  a  feeling.     For  the 
consciousness  of  the  perceiver  in  all  its  stages  the  colour 
perceived  is  a  quality  which  does  not  cease,  as  it  would  if  it 
were  a  sensation,  when  he  turns  to  look  at  something  else, 
but  continues  for  him — if  he  be  uninstructed,  as  a  colour ;  if 
he  be  instructed,  as  a  possibility  of  colour — though  actually 
unseen.     *  But  at  any  rate,'  it  may  be  rejoined,  '  the  umbrella 
may  be  more  or  less  green:  its  perceived  colour  has  the 
variable  vividness  which  you  say  belongs  only  to  sensation.' 
Not  quite  so.    Doubtless  colour  as  a  sensation  is  vivid,  and 
may  be  vivid  in  various  degrees,  but  the  quality  perceived  is 
the  &ct  that  the  umbrella  is  green  of  a  certain  shade.    That 
is  the  fact  or  it  is  not  the  fact ;  it  is  not  more  or  less  the  fact, 
nor  is  the  fact  more  or  less  vivid.    In  a  di£Perent  light  the 
shade  of  colour  might  deepen  or  otherwise;  the  sensation 
produced  might  become  more  lively  or  less  so ;  but  the  vivid- 
ness or  variability  in  degree  of  the  sensation  produced  is  not 
a  vividness  or  variability  in  degree  either  of  the  possibility 
of  its  being  produced,  or  of  the  fact  that  the  colour  is  now 
VOL.  I.  E  B 


418  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

presented  with  a  particular  degree  of  vivacity.  And  either 
finch  possibility  or  such  fact  is  what  I  perceive  in  perceiving 
the  colour. 
Nor  is  the  40.  It  may  be  suggested,  indeed,  that  although  neither  the 
©Bptiou*'  perceived  object  nor  any  of  its  qualities  is  a  vivid  state  of 
yividor  cousciousness,  yet  the  act  of  perception  is  so.  Since,  how- 
cicar ov^  ^^®^'  ^*  ^  ^^*  *^  ^*  perception,  but  things  perceived,  that 
not  elear.  Mr.  Spencer  has  in  view  when  he  speaks  of  the  objective 
world  as  a  vivid  aggregate  of  states  of  consciousuess,  this  sug- 
gestion, if  accepted,  would  not  help  to  rehabilitate  his  doc- 
trine. But  it  could  only  be  accepted  through  a  confusion 
between  clearness  and  vividness.  Vividness  is  not  an  attri- 
bute of  perception,  but  of  the  sensation  which  perception 
interprets,  and  which^  as  in  the  case  of  a  blinding  sight  or 
deafening  sound,  may  be  so  vivid  as  to  render  perception  for 
the  time  impossible.  A  perception  is  clear  when  the  rela- 
tions between  the  elements,  in  the  consciousness  of  which  as 
related  it  consists,  are  distinctly,  coherently,  and  completely 
conceived.  It  becomes  less  clear  in  proportion  as  any  of  the 
elements  drop  out  of  consciousness,  or  as  the  relations 
between  them  become  confused ;  more  clear  as  more  elements 
are  distinguished,  or  relations  discovered  between  those  not 
previonsly  known  to  be  connected.  Each  element  is  dis* 
tinguished  or  not  distinguished,  each  relation  known  or  not 
known ;  there  is  no  more  or  less  of  vividness  in  the  know- 
ledge or  distinction,  nor  do  the  knowledge  or  distinction 
become  more  possible  as  any  feeling  becomes  more  lively, 
less  possible  as  it  becomes  less  so.  To  revert  to  Mr.  Spencer's 
illustration  of  the  headland :  no  doubt,  as  I  approach  it,  my 
perception  of  it  becomes  more  clear ;  not,  however,  in  pro- 
portion as  my  sensations  become  more  vivid,  but  in  propor** 
tion  as  I  see  more  of  the  marks  by  which  I  recognise  it. 
When  I  have  once  recognised  the  green  patch  -as  down,  the 
grey  patch  as  cliff,  no  accession  of  liveliness  to  the  colours 
makes  any  difference  to  the  perception.  What  does  make  a 
difference  to  it  is  the  increasing  number  of  features  by  which 
I  am  able  to  identify  the  particular  down  or  particular  cliff; 
and  these  features  are  in  no  case  sensations  of  which  vivid- 
ness is  predicable.  They  are  not  sensations  but  sensible 
facts, — ^relative  to  actual  or  possible  sensation  and  relations 
of  such  facts,— and  every  one  sees  that  it  is  not  a  &ct  or 
relation  that  can  be  either  vivid  or  faint.    In  like  manner. 


MR.  SPEa^CER  ON  THE  INDEPETI^DEKrCE  OP  MATTER.  416 

when  once  a  clear  perception  of  the  headland  has  been 
arrived  at,  a  gradual  abatement  in  the  liveliness  of  the 
accompanying  sensations  does  not  mean  a  gradual  loss  of 
the  perception.  While  with  the  gathering  of  the  sea-fog, 
according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  instance,  the  green  and  gre j 
colours  become  less  lively,  the  perception  -of  the  headland 
need  not  become  less  clear.  Unless  attention  is  diverted  by 
something  else,  it  may  very  well  be  as  clear  the  moment 
before  complete  obscuration  as  it  was  when  the  sensations  of 
colour  were  most  lively.  Why,  then,  it  may  be  asked,  so 
soon  as  the  obscuration  is  complete  do  we  regard  the  percep- 
tion as  over?  Not,  we  answer,  because  it  is  the  cluster  of 
sensations,  which  may  become  more  or  less  lively  without  its 
being  affected,  but  because  our  consciousness  of  an  object  is 
not  reckoned  a  perception  unless  a  relation  to  present  sen- 
sation is  included  in  that  of  which  we  are  conscious ;  and  in 
the  object  of  which,  in  the  case  supposed,  we  are  conscious, 
when  the  fog  has  reached  a  certain  density,  no  such  relation 
is  included. 

41.  So  much  for  Mr.  Spencer's  *  vivid  clusters,'   as  inde-  Nor  is  the 
pendent  of  faint  ones.     Taking  these  as  he  describes  them,  distinction 
we  find  that  their  constituents  are  not  such  as  can  fitly  be  perceived 
called  vivid  states  of  consciousness,  and  that  they  are  only  *"/*  *?■■ 

ceivou  OP 

independent  of  faint  states  in  the  sense  that  the  distinction  ima^ned 
of  faint  and  vivid  has  no  application  to  them.    No  one  of  ohjeexB 
them  Ib  independent  of  qualification  by  conditions  of  con-  between 
sciousness  which,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  principle  of  jividand 
division  between  the  vivid  aggregate  and  the  faint,  could 
not  belong  to  the  vivid.     His  *  clusters  of  faint  states,  par- 
tially independent  of  the  vivid,'  need  not  detain  us  long. 
According  to  his  instances,  just  as  the  clusters  of  vivid  states 
are  objects  perceived,  so  those  of  faint  states  are  objects 
remembered,  imagined,  or  conceived.     If,  after  perceiving 
the  headland,  I  shut  my  eyes  but  continue  to  think  of  it,  a 
duster  of  faint  states,  still  called  the  headland,  is  supposed 
to  take  the  place  of  the  vivid  cluster  previously  so  called. 
Now  it  is  true,  as  we  have  just  seen,  that  a  certain  vivid 
state,  relation  to  which  as  present  was  one  of  the  relations 
determining  the  object  as  perceived,  ceases  with  the  shutting 
of  the  eyes.     The  object  then  of  which  I  continue  to  think 
as  the  headland  differs  from  that  which  I  perceived  as  the 
headland  in  so  &r  as  the  fact  consisting  in  this  relation  is 

B  B  2 


faint. 


420  MR.  SPET^CER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

no  longer  predicable  of  it.  I  Lave  to  say  of  it  that  it  was 
80  related  instead  of  that  it  is.  In  eveiy  other  respect,  so 
long  as  the  memory  of  it  remains  clear  and  fiill,  the  object 
as  represented  in  imagination  or  conception  remains  what  it 
was  as  perceived.  All  that  can  be  said  of  the  one  can  be 
said  of  the  other.  AJl  the  facts,  consisting  in  possibilities  of 
sensation,  thought  of  in  the  perception  of  the  headland,  are 
equally  thought  of  in  the  remembiunce  of  it,  till  the  concep- 
tion of  it  becomes  inadequate  or  indistinct,  as  it  does,  not 
through  any  abatement  of  liveliness,  but  through  the  disap- 
pearance from  consciousness,  owing  chiefly  to  distraction  by 
competing  experiences,  of  the  constituent  facts.  Thas  the 
distinction  between  objects  of  consciousness  perceived  and 
such  objects  remembered  is  not  one  between  a  ^cluster' 
relatively  vivid  and  a  'cluster'  relatively  faint.  Of  each 
alike  the  truth  is  that  it  is  neither  faint  nor  vivid.  The  dif- 
ference is  that  one  fact  or  relation  belonging  to  the  perceived 
cluster,  and  which  differentiates  it  as  perceived,  is  absent 
from  the  conceived,  while  in  every  other  respect  they  may  be 
the  same  and,  when  they  differ,  do  so  only  through  causes 
which  affect  the  correspondence  between  the  conception  I 
may  have  of  an  object  to-morrow  and  that  which  I  have  of 
it  to-day  just  as  much  as  the  correspondence  between  the 
conception  of  to-day  and  the  perception  of  yesterday.  That 
the  conceived  *  cluster '  should  be  even  *  partially  independ- 
ent '  of  the  perceived,  when  the  constituents  of  the  one  are 
thus  carried  on  into  the  other,  is  clearly  impossible.  Only 
if  the  perceived  object  were  the  *  vivid  state  of  conscious- 
ness,' or  sensation  as  felb,  which  we  have  seen  is  not  even 
one  of  its  constituents,  could  the  conceived  object  be  said  to 
be  independent  of  it. 
Is  then  the  ^2.  An  objection  may  here  be  anticipated  to  some  such 
perceived  effect  as  the  following: — *Tou  are  finding  fault  with  Mr* 
tiling iden-  Spcnccr  On  the  strength  of  a  misinterpretation  of  his  meanin^^ 
ticai  vith  duc  to  a  misunderstanding  on  your  own  part  If  by  "  clusters 
cefved""  ^^  vivid  statcs  of  consciousness  "  he  meant  the  objects  of  per- 
(* logical*)?  ception  in  the  sense  which  you  attach  to  such  objects,  their 
independence  of  faint  states  could  not  be  maintained.  But 
he  does  not.  You  first  misconceive  the  true  nature  of  the 
object  of  perception,  confusing  it  with  the  mere  logical 
"thing** — the  subject  of  sensible  qualities — corresponding 
to  a  connotative  name,  and  then,  on  the  supposition  that 


MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  421 

Mr.  Spencer's  yivid  clusters,  because  they  are  objects  of  per- 
ception, are  so  in  this  fictitioas  sense,  yon  condade  that  they 
have  not  the  independence  which  he  ascribes  to  them  since 
each  logical  'Hhings"  have  not.  We  are  said  indeed  to 
perceive  things,  but  the  real  objects  of  perception  are  not 
logical  things  but  the  associated  facts  of  which  the  logical 
thing  is  the  mere  symbol  used  in  thinking.  These,  in  the 
language  of  an  older  school,  are  real  essences,  while  the 
things  which  we  are  said  to  conceive  are  merely  nominal 
essences,  the  groups  of  attributes  signified  by  general  names. 
So  soon  as  we  try  to  explain  to  ourselves  what  these  attributes 
mean  for  us — to  interpret  our  logical  symbol — we  find  that 
we  are  remembering,  or  anticipatiag  the  recurrence  of, 
events  or  facts  previously  perceived  or  felt.  But  there  is  a 
clear  and  essential  difference  between  the  original  events  in 
the  way  of  sensation  on  the  one  hand,  which  are  perceptions 
or  perceived,  and  are  properly  called  *'  vivid  states  of  con- 
sciousness," and  on  the  other  hand  the  events  in  my 
mental  history,  consisting  in  memory  or  anticipation  as  ex* 
plained,  which  are  properly  faint  states.  The  former  are 
objective,  the  latter  subjective.  Nor  can  there  be  any  doubt 
as  to  the  independence  of  the  former  on  the  latter.  If  Mr. 
Spencer  errs  at  all,  it  is  only  in  respect  of  the  partial  inde- 
pendence which  he  allows  to  the  faint  states.' 

43.  It  would  not  be  difficult  to  show  that  the  distinctions,  Yes,  sof^tr 
whatever  they  may  be  worth,  which  we  here  suppose  to  be  to^eei^ini?** 
made  on  Mr.  Spencer's  behalf  are  not  made  by  him.     Fact  actual  or' 
and  logical  thing,  real  essence  and  nominal  essence,  events  ^^^^^L 
in  the  way  of  sensation  and  events  in  our  mental  history,  are  both  alike, 
all  blended  or  confused  in  his  *  constituents  of  the  vivid 
aggregate.'    This  is  not  said  to  his  disadvantage.     If,  as  we 
hold,  none  of  these  distinctions,  however  important  in  the 
history  of  thought,  are  finally  valid,  there  is  something  to  be 
said  for  an  author  who  writes  as  if  he  were  not  aware  of 
them,  though  it  causes  an  opponent  the  difficulty  of  not 
knowing  how  far  back  he  ought  to  go  in  explaining  his 
opposition.    In  examining  Mr.  Spencer's  notion  of  the  two 
*  aggregates'  we  have  not  felt  bound  explicitly  to  take 
account  of  distinctions  which  he  ignores,  but  have  sup- 
posed ourselves  warranted  on  the  strength  of  his  examples 
iu  applying  to  the  constituents  of  the  vivid  aggregate  the 
doctrine  which  he  shares  with  the  modem  'empirical  school' 


422  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

«a  to  the  nature  of  the  objects  of  perception.  If  we  have> 
with  a  qualification^  identified  the  objects  of  perception  with 
those  of  conception,  this  is  not  due  to  our  understanding  the 
former  as  mere  logical  *  entities,*  but  to  our  being  unable  sq 
to  understand  the  latter.  The  sensible  object,  alike  as  per* 
ceived  and  as  conceived,  we  have  taken  to  consist  in  facts  or 
groups  of  facts,  consisting  in  relations  to  actual  or  possible 
feeling— relations  which,  when  the  object  is  merely  cour 
ceived,  are  all  relations  to  possible  feeling,  whereas,  when  it 
is  perceived,  though  most  of  the  relations  are  so,  some  are  re* 
lations  to  actual  or  present  feeling.  This  being  so,  we  have 
found  that  between  an  aggregate  of  perceivable  facts  and  an 
aggregate  of  objecfcs  represented  in  memory  or  imagination, 
no  such  separation,  or  relation  of  mutual  independence,  is 
possible  as  Mr.  Spencer  supposes  to  exist  between  the  aggre-> 
gates,  called  vivid  and  faint,  which  he  identifies  severally 
with  object  and  subject.  So  long  as  we  regard  perceivable 
facts,  the  constituents  of  the  vivid  aggregate,  as  objects  for 
consciousness,  or  as  being  really  what  they  are  for  the  subject 
that  perceives  and  knows  aright,  this  conclusion  is  unavoid- 
able. Are  we  then  to  understand  that  our  error  has  lain 
in  treating  them  as  objects  of  consciousness,  and  that  since 
they  are  events  in  nature  as  opposed  to  events  in  our  mental 
history,  real  facts  in  opposition  to  facts  conceived,  they  are 
*  beyond  consciousness,'  in  the  sense  of  having  some  other 
existence  than  that  which  they  have  for  consciousness,  yet 
one  compatible  with  their  being  perceived  P  Is  that  what  Mr, 
Spencer  means  ?  Is  it  an  intelligible  or  significant  proposition  P 
Next,  Bap-  44.  This  question  leads  us  to  another  aspect  of  Mr.  Spencer's 
^matter'  doctrine  as  to  the  *  independence  of  matter'  than  that  which 
tobesome-  we  have  been  so  far  considering.  Hitherto  we  have  dealt 
yond '  the'  ^^^^  ^^  ^  meaning,  according  to  his  own  explanation  of  what 
*  nvid^  he  understands  by  *  matter '  or  the  *  object,'  that  the  *  vivid 
which  they  Aggregate  of  conscious  states '  is  independent  of  the  faint. 
depend.  We  have  sought  to  show  that,  if  the  representation  of  the 
objective  and  subjective  worlds  respectively  as  such  aggre- 
gates were  admissible,  their  separation  could  not  be  main- 
tained ;  but  that,  in  fact,  it  is  inadmissible.  We  have  now 
to  notice  Mr.  Spencer's  transition  to  another  way  of  under- 
standing the  independence  of  matter,  according  to  which  the 
independence  does  not  exist  on  the  part  of  the  '  vivid  aggre- 
gate,' but  on  the  part  of  something,  antithetical  to  the  sub-, 
ject  of  consciousness,  on  which  that  aggregate  depends. 


MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER  428 

45.  If  we  were  to  hold  Mr.  Spencer  bound  by  the  ordinary  Th« 
rales  of  consistency,  it  might  seem  that  his  repeated  account  |°g^Jj. 
of  the  '  vivid  aggregate '  as  an  aggregate  of  states  of  con-  ent  with 
Bcionsness  was  incompatible  with  his  regarding  the  object  ^^-     , 
which  he  identifies  with  it  as  in  any  sense  *  beyond  con-  langaage. 
scioosness.'    How  can  he  hold,  it  may  be  asked,  that  the 

fiicts  or  objects  which  he  calls  states  of  consciousness  are 
anything  else  than  what  they  are  for  consciousness  9  It  is 
quite  a  tenable  position  to  deny  that  an  object  is  a  state  of 
consciousness,  and  yet  to  hold  that  only  for  a  thinking  con-' 
Bciousness  has  it  any  reality;  but  the  converse  position, 
which  affirms  it  at  once  to  be  a  state  of  consciousness  and  to 
be  a  fact  beyond  consciousness,  does  not  seem  to  admit  of 
coherent  statement.  A  reader  of  Mr.  Spencer,  however, 
soon  discovers  that  he  must  not  be  held  too  tightly  to  hid 
declarations  about  ^states  of  consciousness.'  That  is  a 
phrase  which,  like  *  phenomena'  with  other  writers,  seems 
to  slip  from  him  without  determinate  meaning.  Perhaps  it 
serves  to  give  a  philosophical  character  to  descriptions  of 
experiences,  on  the  sea-shore  and  elsewhere^  which  might 
otherwise  be  thought  to  be  written  too  much  after  the  man* 
ner  of  a  newspaper  correspondent.  A  plain  man,  whom  it 
strikes  as  bad  sense  to  have  his  umbrella  called  a  *  cluster  of 
Vivid  stiites  of  consciousness,'  may  be  the  more  ready  on 
that  account  to  believe  it  good  psychology.  At  any  rate, 
having  already  seen '  that  the  objective  world,  with  which 
Mr.  Spencer  identifies  the  '  vivid  aggregate,'  has  been  pre- 
viously determined  simply  as  the  negation  of  all  or  any 
states  of  consciousness,  we  shall  not  be  surprised  to  find  it 
constantly  implied  that  the  members  of  this  aggregate, 
though  it  is  an  aggregate  of  states  of  consciousness,  are  not 
such  states  after  all. 

46.  When  he  speaks,  for  instance,  of  antecedent  and  con-  But  vrht^n 
sequent  in  the  *  vivid  series,'  he  is  not  really  thinking  of  Jj  f^^e 
states  of  consciousness,  of  which  one  happens  to  come  be-  of  cod- 
fore  the  other,  but  of  a  relation  in  the  way  of  cause  and  S^^^^'^^ 
efiect,  which  no  number  or  order  of  sequent  feelings  can  renUy 
constitute.    Thus  in  illustrating  the  separateness  of  the  two  ^^. 
aggregates  by  the  example  of  the  *  curling  breaker,'  and  the 

*  sound  made  by  its  fall  on  the  beach,'  he  remarks, '  No  com- 
binaiian  of  faint  feelings  serves  to  initiate  this  vivid  feeling 

>  AboT«,  §  IS. 


424  MR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

of  sound ;  nor  when  I  receive  the  vivid  visual  feelings  from 
the  curling  breaker,  can  I  prevent  the  vivid  feeling  of  sound 
from  following/ '  Very  true,  we  reply,  if  by  to  *  initiate  *  is 
meant  to  cause ;  but  in  that  sense  a  combination  of  vivid 
states  serves  to  initiate  it  as  little.  Mr.  Spencer,  it  is  to  be 
presumed,  does  not  consider  the  sensations  which  the  vivid 
feeling  of  sound  immediately  follows  to  be  the  cause  of  the 

*  sound  made  by  the  breaker's  fall  on  the  beach/  If  he 
does,  not  the  'Vivid  visual  feelings,'  merely,  which  I  am 
said  to  receive  from  the  curling  breaker,  but  the  odours, 
pressures,  and  sounds  present  along  with  them,  will  have  a 
right  to  be  so  considered.  On  the  other  hand,  if  to  *  ini- 
tiate '  means  merely  to  precede,  faint  states  of  consciousness 
may  initiate  the  sound  just  as  well  as  vivid  ones;   nor, 

*  while  I  am  physically  passive,'  can  I  prevent  its  sequence 
upon  states  of  the  one  sort  any  more  than  upon  states  of  the 
other.  In  respect  of '  initiation,'  then,  vivid  and  faint  states 
stand  on  the  same  footing.  We  do  not  require  a  philosopher 
to  teach  us  that  no  one 

'  •  .  •  can  hold  a  fire  in  hw  hand 
By  thinking  on  the  frosty  Gaucasaa, 
Or  cloy  the  hungry  edge  of  appetite 
By  mere  imagination  of  a  feast  ;* 

but  no  antecedent '  cluster  of  vivid  states '  will  save  the  hand 
from  burning,  or  fill  the  belly  any  better.  Vivid  states  of 
feeling  do  not  cause  vivid  states,  nor  do  faint  states  cause 
faint  states.  A  certain  faint  state  may  precede  a  certain 
vivid  one  as  immediately  and  unfailingly  as  a  certain  vivid 
state  precedes  it.  In  the  instance  before  us  the  precedence 
of  the  sight,  as  a  vivid  state  of  consciousness,  to  the  sound 
is  not  more  direct  or  uniform  than  is  the  precedence  to  it  of 
those  '  faint  states '  which  must  be  associated  with  the  sight 
in  order  to  render  it  a  sight  of  a  '  curling  breaker,'  or  of 
anything  whatever.  If  we  do  not  reckon  such  precedence 
causation,  neither  may  we  reckon  the  representation  in  me* 
mory  of  a  curling  breaker  the  cause  of  the  sequent  represen- 
tation of  a  sound.  The  relation  of  cause  and  efiect  does  not 
in  either  case  consist  in  the  sequence  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness, but  in  the  relation  between  this  sequence  and  some- 
thing else  which  determines  it. 
Ab  appears        47.  The   essential   difference,    therefore,  does    not  lie 

*  Principles  qf  Ptycholofff/,  §  456. 


MR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER  425 

between  an  initiation  of  the  sound  bj  viyid  states  and  im-  ftom  his 
possibility  of  its  initiation  by  faint  ones,  but  between  its  *^^°""*^ 
initiation  by  states  of  consciousness,  whether  vivid  or  faint,  count  of 
and  the  real  causation  of  it    The  cause  of  the  sound  Kes  in  ^"  *"^®" 
the  event  called  the  fall  of  the  breaker  on  the  beach,  but  in  and  oon- 
this  only  as  determined  by  complex  laws  of  matter  and  mo-  ^q^ei^ce. 
tion,  and  as  related  through  specific  vibrations  of  a  medium 
to  a  particular  nervous  organism.     Neither  the  event,  nor  its 
conditions  or  relations,  are  reducible  to  a  succession  or  coin- 
cidence of  feelings.     The  sound  itself,  again,  as  an  effect  or 
as  determined  by  relation  to  such  a  cause,  is  much  more 
than  a  feeling  of  this  or  that  man,  or  of  any  number  of  men, 
as  he  or  they  happen  to  be  conscious  of  it.    It  is  a  feeling 
of  which  the  nature  lies  in  conditions  and  relations  not  pre- 
sent to  the  consciousness  of  the  subjects  of  it.    To  call  it 
a  state  of  consciousness  is  to  ignore  this  nature,  and  thus  to 
convey  either  no  meaning  at  all  or  one  that  is  false.     How 
little  meaning  Mr.  Spencer  himself  attaches  to  the  phrase 
becomes  apparent  when  we  find  him  saying  '  that  '  in  the 
vivid  aggregate ' — an  aggregate  of  states  of  consciousness — 
*  the  antecedent  to  any  consequent  may  or  may  not  be  within 
the  limits  of  consciousness ; '  a  statement  which,  taken  as  it 
stands,  amounts  simply  to  this,  that  a  state  of  consciousness 
may  be  beyond  the  limits  of  consciousness.   In  the  immediate 
sequel,  the  directness  of  this  contradiction  is  avoided  by  an 
altered  formula,  which,  however,  scarcely  conveys  a  more 
intelligible  meaning.     Whereas  *  in  the  series  of  faint  states 
the  antecedent  to  each  consequent '  can  always  be  found,  in 
the  vivid  aggregate  it  is  not  so.  *  Into  that  part  immediately 
present  there  are  ever  entering  new   components,   which 
make  their  appearance  out  of  some  region  lying  beyond  con- 
sciousness,'— a  region  afterwards  said  to  be  one  *  of  potential 
antecedents  and  potential  vivid  states.'    Fine  word — poten- 
tial I     But  a  potential  state  of  consciousness — a  state  not 
present,  a  feeling  not  felt — is  not  a  state  of  consciousness  at 
all.     We  can  only  suppose  it  to  exist  as  a  potential  state  in 
relation  to  a  subject  contemplating  the  possibility  of  its 
being  felt,  and  Mr.    Spencer,  by  placing  it  in  a  *  region 
beyond  consciousness,'  excludes  this  supposition.     Except 
as  related -to  such  a  subject,  an  ^aggregate  of  states  of  con- 
sciousness/ of  which  the  greater  part  are  thus  absent  or 

'  Frineipies  ofVwychology^  %  466, 


426  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

potential,  is  not  less  essentially  nonsense  than  is  a  '  state  of 
conscionsness  beyond  the  limits  of  consciousness.'  Nor,  if 
we  seek  to  translate  words  into  thoaghts,  shall  we  find  it 
possible  to  make  much  of  a  '  series  of  vivid  states/  to  any 
consequent  in  which  the  antecedent  state  may  not  be  the 
antecedent,  nor  of  states  of  consciousness  which  make 
HiB  ui-  ^^^^  appearance  *  out  of  a  region  *  where  they  are  not. 
vocal  use  48.  Mr.  Spencer's  illustrations  of  the  characteristics  of 
^  *  t^  ^^®  vivid  aggregate  thus  described,  though  they  make  his 
meaning  clearer,  also  make  it  clear  that  what  he  means  is 
not  what  he  says,  and  that  his  doctrine  of  the  ^  aggregates ' 
collapses  as  soon  as  stated :  <The  white  cumulus  which  has 
just  come  over  the  blue  sky  on  the  left  constitutes  a  change 
in  the  vivid  series  that  was  not  preceded  by  anything  I 
could  perceive.  Sudden  as  it  was,  the  sensation  of  cold  I 
lately  had  on  the  back  of  my  hand  took  me  by  surprise ; 
since,  not  having  seen  the  cloud  behind,  I  did  not  anticipate 
the  rain-drop  which  caused  the  sensation.  •  •  •  If  I  consider 
simply  the  pebble  which  just  shot  across  my  area  of  vision 
and  fell  into  the  sea,  I  can  only  say  that  it  was  a  change  in 
the  vivid  aggregate,  the  antecedent  of  which  was  somewhere 
outside  the  vivid  aggregate.  But  such  motions  of  pebbles 
have  in  past  cases  had  for  their  visible  antecedents  certain 
motions  of  boys,  and  with  the  vivid  states  now  produced  by 
the  falling  pebble,  there  cohere  in  consciousness  the  faint 
states  representing  some  similar  antecedent  outside  the 
aggfregate  of  vivid  states.*  *  Now  it  will  scarcely  be  denied 
that  every  vivid  state  has  q^nother  state  before  it,  just  as 
much  as  every  faint  state.  If  the  coming  of  the  cumulus, 
then,  over  the  blue  sky,  and  the  shooting  of  the  pebble 
across  the  area  of  vision  are  vivid  states,  they  have  vivid 
states  before  them.  These,  however,  according  to  Mr. 
Spencer,  are  not  their  antecedents.  Yet  clearly,  if  we  say 
with  him  that  the  state  preceding  a  faint  state  is  its  ante- 
cedent, and  that  the  *  vivid  visual  feeling '  which  we  experi- 
ence immediately  before  we  hear  the  sound  of  the  breaking 
wave  is  the  antecedent  of  that  sound,  we  cannot  with  him 
deny  that  the  states  preceding  those  of  which  he  speaks  in 
the  passage  just  quoted  are  their  antecedents,  without  using 
either  ^  antecedent '  or  '  state  of  consciousness,'  or  both^  in 
an  equivocal  sense. 

■  PrineipUi  of  Ffychohgy,  §§  46B  and  467. 


consoioQi- 
nees: 


MR,   SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  427 

49,  A  little  attention  will  show  that  the  equivocation  i&  ?^?^?°* 
twofold,  or  rather  that  it  affects  ^  antecedent '  and  ^  states  of  cause  and 
consciousness  *  correlatively.     If  we  look  to  Mr.  Spencer's  » »t*^  o^ 
account  of  the  phenomena  of  which  ^  the  antecedents  are 
outside  the  vivid  aggregate/  we  find  that,  although  accord- 
ing to  him  they  are  ^  CQmponents '  of  this  aggregate, — ue. 
states  of  consciousness, — they  are  also  more  particularly 
described  as  changes  in  it.     In  truth  the  one  description  is 
inoou&patible  with  the  other.    A  change  is  not  any  single 
state  of  consciousness,  nor  any  number  of  states ;  it  is  a 
relation  between  them  arising  out  of  or  determined  by  their 
i-elation  to  something  else,  which  is  not  one  of  the  states, 
but  is  persistent  throughout  them.     A  change  in  the  vivid 
aggregate,  then,  cannot  be  a  component  of  the  aggregate — 
cannot  be  one,  or  more  than  one,  of  the  states  of  which  the 
B^gregsAe  is  supposed  to  consist.    Not  being  one  among  the 
series  of  vivid  states  at  all,  it  is  as  impossible  that  it  should 
have  an  antecedent  in  this  series  as,  were  it  one  of  the  series 
(as  Mr.  Spencer  takes  it  to  be),  it  would  be  impossible  for  it 
not  to  have  such  an  antecedent.    In  what  sense,  then,  can 
it  be  said  to  have  an  antecedent  at  all  P    ^  In  the  sense  of 
cause,'  will  be  the  ready  answer.     We  have  already  shown, 
however,   that  the  cause    of  the   phenomena,  natural  or 
mental — such  as  the  sound  of  the  breaker  or  any  representa- 
tion  in   memory — from  which  Mr.   Spencer  distinguishes 
those  now  under  consideration,  is  just  as  little  a  preceding 
state  of  consciousness.    In  those  cases  in  which,  according 
to  him,  the  antecedent  is  ^  within  the  limits  of  conscious- 
ness,' just  as  much  as  in  those  where  it  is  not,  neither  is  the 

*  consequent,'  if  it  means  efiect,  consequent  upon  a  state  of 
consciousness,  nor  is  the  *  antecedent,'  if  it  means  cause, 
antecedent  to  a  state  of  consciousness.  The  consequent,  to 
which  a  cause  is  correlative,  is  not  a  state  of  consciousness, 
but  a  change  ;  the  antecedent,  to  which  a  change  is  corre- 
lative, is  not  a  state  of  consciousness,  but  a  cause.  If,  then, 
we  are  to  allow  ourselves  to  follow  Mr.  Spencer  in  speaking 
(a)  of  the  antecedent  of  the  sound  from  the  breaker,  (6)  of 
the  antecedent  of  So-and-so's  imagination  of  the  breaker, 
(e)  of  the  antecedents  of  the  changes  called  the  coming  of  a 
cumulus  over  the  blue  sky,  or  the  shooting  of  a  pebble 
Across  the  area  of  vision,  and  if  we  want  to  keep  the  term 

*  antecedent '  to  the  same  sense  throughout,  we  must  take  it 


#528  BIR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 


Whether  it 
be  ooQ- 
ceiyedonly 
or  per- 
ceived 


States  of 
coDScions- 
nessare 
either  ap- 
pearances 
of  an  order 
of  nature, 
or  nothing 
reaL 


in  each  case  to  mean  a  cause  which  is  not  a  state  of  con* 
scioosness.  And  not  less,  if  we  are  to  keep  '  consequent '  to 
the  meaning  correlatiTe  to  that  thas  given  to  '  antecedent,' 
must  we  take  it  in  each  case  to  mean  a  determined  sequence 
of  states — a  change  either  of  nature  or  the  mind — ^which 
cannot  therefore  be  a  sequent  state. 

60.  Is  there  then  no  real  distinction  between  the  cases 
distinguished  above  as  a  and  cP    Undoubtedly  there  is,  but 
it  is  not  a  distinction  between  a  case  where  a  phenomenon 
has  a  state  of  consciousness  before  it,  and  one  where  it  has 
nob     The  statement  that  the  coming  of  the  cumulus  over 
the  blue  sky  *  was  not  preceded  by  anything  I  could  per- 
ceive,' obviously  untrue  as  it  stands,  really  means  that  the 
motion  of  the  cumulus  is  not  perceived  as  a  continuation  of 
a  previous  motion.    The  perception  of  it  is  preceded  by 
another,  but  the  object  perceived  in  the  previous  perception 
is  not  one  of  which  it  can  be  conceived  to  be  the  effect,  con- 
sistently with  other  experience.    Every  perceived  object  is 
also  conceived,  but  not  every  conceived  object  is  also  per- 
ceived ;  and  in  the  supposed  case  the  cause  of  the  pheno- 
menon, which,  as  in  every  case,  is  an  object  of  conception, 
has  not  also  been  perceived,  Le.  has  not  been  related  to  a 
present  sensation,  or  vivid  state  of  consciousness.      It  is 
otherwise  with  the  sound  of  the  breaker.     Its  cause  is  as 
much  an  object  of  conception,  as  little  a  vivid  state,  as  that 
of  the  cloud's  transit,  but  it  is  related  to  a  sensation  that 
has  been  actually   felt.      Thus,  though  there  is  no  more 
sense  in  talking  of  a  ^potential  antecedent'  than  of  a 
*  potential  vivid  state '  or  unfelt  feeling — for  whether  *  ante- 
cedent '  means  cause  or  previous  sensation,  it  is  alike  actual 
"—we  may  truly  say  that  in  one  case  tiie  antecedent,  as 
meaning  cause,  is  actually  related  to  sensation,  while  in  the 
other  it  is  but  potentially  so. 

61.  By  degrees  the  mysterious  region  in  which,  according 
to  Mr.  Spencer,  states  of  consciousness  are  not,  but  out  of 
which  they  make  their  appearance,  has  taken  an  intelligible 
character.  It  is  simply  the  order  of  nature,  tlie  realm  of 
cause  and  effect,  to  which  the  phenomena,  called  by  him 
<  members  of  the  vivid  series,'  always  belong  and  which  they 
never  quit.  They  so  belong,  however,  only  because  they  are 
not  what  he  says  they  are.  What  do  not  belong  to  it,  or 
are  never  in  it,  are  mere  states  of  consciousness, — ^feelings 


MB.   SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  429 

as  apart  from  determination  by  relations  which  are  not  feel- 
ing^9 — ^bnt  neither  do  these  ever  '  make  their  appearance  out 
of  it^'  When  it  is  said  that  a  state  of  consciousness  makes 
its  appearance  out  of  a  region  where  it  is  not,  ^  state  of  con- 
sciousness '  changes  its  meaning  between  the  two  clauses  of 
the  proposition.  The  state  of  consciousness,  which  *  makes 
its  appearance,  Ac/  is  a  feeling  as  determined  by  tiiat  order 
of  nature,  not  consisting  in  feelings,  of  which  it  is  a 
changed  appearance.  The  state  of  consciousness,  on  the 
other  hand,  which  is  not  in  this  ^  region  '  or  order  of  nature 
is  a  fiction  of  certain  ^  idealists,'  against  whom  Mr.  Spencer 
inefibctually  exclaims  without  having  delivered  himself  from 
their  mode  of  thinking.  It  is  a  mere  feeling,  or  feeling 
simply  as  one  of  a  series  of  ^  vivid  states ' ;  a  feeling,  so  to 
speak,  minus  the  reality  derived  from  conditions  which  are 
not  feelings.  In  such  abstraction  it  is  a  nonentity,  a  word 
to  which  no  reality  corresponds ;  for  no  real  feeling  has  ever 
not  been  in  that  order  of  nature,  that  ^  region,'  out  of  which 
it  is  said  to  appear. 

52.  This  change  of  meaning,  however,  is  not  recognised  The  rml 
by  Mr.  Spencer  himself.     He  leaves  us  to  suppose  that  the  J^ng  ^^^ 
objects  of  the  sensible  world  are  all  alike  vivid  states  of  con-  states  of 
sciousness,  more  or  less  composite ;  that  these  divide  them-  ^''"^j^^" 
selves  into  two  orders  according  as  they  have  or  have  not  it  (m 
other  states  of  consciousness  for  their  antecedents;  but  '.H^"""*^ 
that  the  distinction,  in  respect  of  which  they  so  divide  entof     ' 
themselves,  is  not  one  affecting  the  intrinsic  nature  which  conscioua- 
entitles  them  in  all  cases  to  the  designation  ^  states  of  con- 
sciousness.'   It  is  to  the  illustrations  he  gives  of  his  mean- 
ing, not  to  his  own  statement  of  it,  that  we  appeal  as  our 
justification  for  interpreting  it  in  a  different  way.     From 
them  we  learn  that,  whereas  all  states  of  consciousness  are 
characterised  indeed  by  sequence  in  time  upon  other  states 
of  consciousness,  but  also  by  dependence  upon  conditions 
which  are  not  such  states  at  all,  it  is  in  every  case  the  de- 
pendence, not  the  sequonce,  which  constitutes  the  nature 
ascribed  to  '  constituents  of  the  vivid  aggregate.'     If  this  is 
so,  such  a  description  is  essentially  a  misnomer.     It  is  a 
description  of  the  objects  of  the  real  world  as  being  just 
that  which  in  their  reality  they  are  not,  and  which  Mr. 
Spencer  himself  does  not  think  of  them  as  being.     In  all 
the  instances  of  vivid  states  of  consciousness  which  he  de- 


430  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

scribes  we  have  found  a  nature  implied  which  is  not  reducible 
to  such  states — which  is  not  a  succession  or  coincidence  of 
feelings.      In  this  lies  the  explanation  of  the  paral<^8m 
already  noticed  in  regard  to  the  'independence'  of   the 
object.     This  independence,  which  throughout  the  reason- 
ing is  claimed  for  the  vivid  states  of  consciousness,  is  in  the 
conclusion  ascribed  to  something  '  beyond  consciousness  and 
absolutely  independent  of  it,'  called  matter.    The  tmth  is 
that  under  the  name  'states  of  consciousness'  there  has 
throughout   been   tacitly  understood  a  determination   by 
some^ing  else,  of  which  just  what  is  predicable  of  states  of 
consciousness  has  to  be  denied.     The  abstraction  of  this 
something  else,  which,  because  the  negation  of  all  gtates  of 
consciousness,  is  supposed  to  be  *  absolutely  independent '  of 
consciousness,  yields  Mr.  Spencer's  conception  of  matter. 
It  is  on  the  possibility  of  claiming  for  this  abstract  object 
an  existence  independent  of,  and  separate  from,  thought, 
that  the  possibility  of  claiming  such  existence  for  the  vivid 
aggregate — the   world  of  sensible  objects — ultimately  de- 
pends.   We  have  seen  that  of  these  objects,  as  objects  of 
consciousness,  no  such  independence  can  be  rightly  asserted. 
Facts  perceived  or  presented  form  one  organic  whole  of 
experience  with  facts  conceived  or  represented.     But  Mr. 
Spencer  at  bottom  supposes  them  to  have  an  existence  in 
relation  to  a  *  matter,'  which  is  independent  and  separate, 
other  than  that  in  relation  to  consciousness,  and  thus  to  be 
independent  of  thought  in  the  sense  of  being  dependent  on 
that  which  is  independent  of  it.     It  is  the  validity  of  this 
view  which  we  have  now  to  examine. 
7^.  what  is       53.  At  the  risk  of  iteration  let  us  first  make  sure  that  the 
thingeur'  P^^^*  ^*  ^^^ue  is  Understood.     It  is  not  the  question  whether 
by  relation  the  objective  world  can  or  cannot  be  reduced  to  a  succession 
aii^tMof  ^^  states  of  consciousness.    To  attempt  so  to  reduce  it,  as  we 
consciooB-    have  sufficiently  seen,  is  a  self-contradictory  abstraction. 
deter^      Feelings  sequent  on  each  other,  apart  from  the  world,  a 
minned.      nature,  an  order  of  things,  which  is  not  one  or  any  number 
of  them,  would  properly  be  nothing  at  all :  nor  by  supposing 
them  indefinitely  vivid  could  we  give  any  real  meaning  to  a 
supposition  which  in  efiect  leaves    nothing  to  be  vivid. 
Though  Mr.  Spencer  himself  sometimes  writes  as  if  lively 
feelings  constituted  ^  the  object,'  which  he  denounces  idealism 
for  seeking  to  suppress,  we  have  given  him  credit  for  meaning 


MR   SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  481 

to  be  more  consistent  tlian  be  seems.    He  regards  all  states 
of  consciousness  as  related  to  *  something  else  beyond  them/ 
anrl  as  deriving  tbeir  natare  from  this  relation.     So  far  the 
idealist  is  qnite  at  one  with  him.     The  difference  arises  upon 
the  question,  what  this  something  else  is.    Mr.  Spencer's 
views  about  it  seem  to  form  a  series,  in  which  (to  use  an 
Aristotelian  distinction)  what  is  ^vast  wpirepov  maj  perhaps 
Iiave  been  yevicst  vcrepov.     His  first  or  last  thought  about 
it  is,  that  it  cannot  be  conceived  at  all.     It  is  the  unknow- 
able.    His  second  thought  is  that  it  is  either  matter  as 
including  force,  or  force  as  that  of  which  *  matter  and  motion 
are  differently  conditioned  manifestations,'  and  that  this  is 
the  alterum  quid  by  relation  to  which  all  phenomena  or 
states  of  consciousness  indifferently  are  determined.    But 
then  it  is  *  objective,'  and  this  in  Mr.  Spencer's  view  implies 
antithesis  to  a  co-ordinate  subject — a  separation  of  ego  and 
fUWr-ego*    Hence  a  third  conception  of  it,  under  which  it 
breaks  into  two — a  subjective  something  else,  and  an  objec- 
tive something  else,  a  mind  and  a  matter. 

54.  Logically,  no  doubt,  these  conceptions  exclude  each  Incon- 
other,  but  not  so  in  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy.    If  we  might  JJ*^g  ^^^f 
hazard  a  conjecture  as  to  his  mental  history,  we  should  sur-  this  held 
mise  that  the  one  last  stated  had  come  first  in  it,  and  that  ^^^ 
the  other  two  had  gradually  supervened  without  any  recog*  Spencer. 
nition  of  their  incompatibility  with  it  and  with  each  other. 
In  his  writings  they  are  alternately  dominant  and  in  abey- 
ance, and  may  sometimes  be  found  struggling  for  existence 
against  each  other  in  the  same  chapter,  the  sign  of  conflict 
being  the  strangely  ambiguous  use  of  the  terms  objective 
and  subjective*    Attempts  to  reconcile  them,  it  is  true,  from 
time  to  time  appear.    An  instinctive  desire  to  adjust  the 
third  and  the  first  finds  expression  in  the  occasional  state- 
ment that  subject  and  object  are  alike  *  manifestations  of  the 
xmknowable.'   What  then  is  the  subject  and  what  the  object  9 
If  the  subject  is  consciousness,  the  object  that  which  is 
beyond  consciousness,  the  latter  is  no  *  manifestation ' ;  it 
does  not  differ  from  the  unknowable ;  and  all  phenomena — 
the  ^  vivid  aggregate '  no  less  than  the  *  faint ' — are  alike 
subjective.      It  may  be  suggested,  indeed,   according    to 
another  mode  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy,  that  the  object, 
though  beyond  consciousness,  is  still  other  than  the  un- 
knowable, being  a  manifestation  of  it  as  matter  or  force;  but 


432  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

we  shall  then  have  the  additional  difficnltj  of  finding  any- 
thing not  derived  from  consciousness  by  which  to  distinguish 
such  matter  from  the  unknowable,  without  being  any  nearer 
to  a  distinction  between  objective  and  subjective  phenomena. 
If  the  distinction  lies  between  consciousness  as  the  subject, 
and  what  is  beyond  it  as  the  object,  all  phenomena,  as  con- 
stituents of  consciousness,  must  be  subjective,  whether  the 
*  object  *  beyond  be  simply  *  the  unknowable,'  or  the  unkno^r- 
able  plus  a  double  of  itself  called  force  or  matter.     Such  a 
division,  in   short,  of  the  world  of  consciousness,  as  Mr. 
Spencer  adopts,  into  '  antithetical  and  independent  halves,' 
presupposes  a  dualism  of  ^  things  beyond  consciousness '  as 
its  ground.     Though  it  is  itself  appealed  to  as  the  ground  of 
the  separation  between  subject  and  object,  it  has  become 
clear  from  our  previous  inquiry  that  Mr.  Spencer's  thoughts 
have  really  followed  another  course — that  the  presupposed 
and  misunderstood  antithesis  of  subject  and  object  is  the  basis 
of  the  untenable  separation  between  ^  faint  and  vivid  aggre- 
gates.' If  by  the  subject  is  meant  consciousness  as  a  succession 
of  states,  the  constituents  of  both  ^  aggregates  '  are  alike  sub- 
jective.    If  by  the  object,  again,  is  meant  a  sole  ^  thing  in 
itself  beyond  consciousness,  the  same  conclusion  follows. 
Only  if  the  subject  is  regarded  as  one  thing  ^  beyond  con- 
sciousness,' but  producing  certain  modes  of  it — as  *  mind '  in 
itself — ^and  the  object  as  another  thing  also  beyond  conscious- 
ness, but  producing  certain  other  modes  of  it — as  *  matter '  in 
itself — can  Mr.  Spencer's  distinction  be  maintained. 
For  true  65.  It  is  here  that  the  idealist  joins  issue.    Are  there  two 

«»ranT      *  somethings  else '  than  states  of  consciousness,  or  only  one 
n/>»-€uroare  something  elseP      Are   ego  and  nan-p-go    separate  things, 
factoM  ©r  s^'^^'^^y  *  ly^g  beyond '  separate  aggregates  of  conscious 
one  reality  states,  or  are  they  correlative  factors  of  one  reality  P    And  is 
—thought,  ^jg  reality — which  is  doubtless  other  than  any  or  all  states 
of  consciousness,  vivid  no  less  than  faint,  so  long  as  these 
are  regarded  in  fictitious  abstraction  as  that  which  passes 
apart  from  that  which  passes  not — is  it  for  that  reason  other 
than  thought  P     Or  does  it  only  seem  to  be  so  because  we 
understand  by  thought  something  difierent  from  thought  in 
its  truth ;  either  the  thought  of  each  of  us,  which  is  related 
to  thought  in  its  truth  as  the  undeveloped  to  the  full  actu- 
ality, or  thought  in  a  sense  in  which  it  is  the  creature  of  a 
false  philosophical  abstraction,  and  is  related  to  true  thought 


MB.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  433 

as  the  imaginary  to  the  real — ^thonght  conceived  as  separate 
from  the  object,  which  is  nothing  without  it  and  without 
which  it  is  nothmg? 

56.  We  have  already  seen  how  Mr.  Spencer  appeals  to  the  Mr. 
experience  of  resistance  as  *  giving  concreteness  to  the  con-  doctrine  of 
captions  of  self  and  not-self.*    We  have  seen  also  that,  the  inde- 
according  to  his  own  showing,  in  giving  concreteness  to  them  of  matter 
it  presupposes  them — that,  in  fact,  the  experience  appealed  m  either 
to  is  not  in  a  feeling  or  any  succession  of  feelings,  but  a  or^manl^* 
complex  theory  of  such  succession,  which  proves  much  indeed  festHtion 
as  to  what  is  *  beyond '  the  feelings,  but  nothing  as  to  what  **'  ^^^^^ 
is  beyond  the  theorising  mind.'   Its  testimony,  in  short,  is  not 

the  testimony  of  sense,  nor  is  it  a  testimony  to  the  existence 
of  an  independent  object.  Still  it  is  and  will  remain  the 
stronghold  of  the  popular  conviction  that  I  am  not  matter 
and  that  matter  is  not  me — a  conviction  which  welcomes  as 
independent  evidence  of  its  truth  what  is  really  its  expres- 
sion, and  which,  suspicious  of  metaphysics  so  long  as  Mr. 
Spencer  is  asseverating  the  objectivity  of  the  object  as  an 
aggregate  of  conscious  states,  feels  at  home  with  him  when 
it  finds  that  the  object  is  an  outward  force,  a  force  not  mine, 
pulling  the  other  way  from  a  force  which  I  put  forth  from 
within.  It  is  thus  when  the  doctrine  of  subject  and  object 
as  independent  aggregates  of  conscious  states — the  doctrine 
which  we  have  so  far  been  examining — is  for  the  time  in 
abeyance,  and  when  the  independence  of  matter,  either  as  a 
source  or  as  a  manifestation  of  force,  is  being  asserted,  that 
Mr.  Spencer  commands  the  most  ready  assent.  It  is  with 
this  latter  form  of  his  doctrine  that  we  have  now  to  deal. 
For  the  statement  of  it  we  must  apply  chiefly  to  the  work 
entitled  *  First  Principles.*  This  indeed  often  appeals  for 
the  detailed  justification  of  its  doctine  to  the  ^  Principles  of 
Psychology ' ;  but  we  have  already  found  that  its  realism 
does  not  gain  from  the  ^  transfiguration,'  which,  in  being 
psychologically  justified,  it  has  to  undergo. 

57.  It  is  esseutial  to  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine,  as  he  con-  A  feeling 
stantly  shows  himself  to  be  aware,  that  the  announcement  of  ^?i^^.*** 
an  independent  non-ego  as  force  should  be  an  immediate  and  nression  of 
primitive  deliverance  of  consciousness.     It  must  thus  be  ^^ 
either  itself  a  simple  sensation,  or  such  an  *  organisation '  of  *  feeling' 
simple  sensations  as  is  effected  by  the  action  of  the  force  ^,"*?f  ^^ 

*  *'  ^i*.-— T"*^'. — .  *  aouDle 

»  Above,  §§  20,  21. 
VOL.  I.  r  -j-r 


434  ICH.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

itself.  If  the  announcement  ^ere  found  to  be  itaelf  an '  ideal 
construction,'  the  creature  of  intellectual  synthesis,  the  in- 
dependence of  the  object  announced  could,  to  say  the  leasts 
no  longer  be  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course.     Hence  in  one 
passage,  which  may  be  taken  as  a  sample  of  many,  we  find 
Mr.  Spencer  writing  as  follows: — ^A  single  impression  of 
force  is  manifestly  receivable  by  a  sentient  being  devoid  of 
mental  forms:   grant  but  sensibility,  with  no  established 
power  of  thought,  and   a  force   producing  some  nervous 
change  will  still  be  presentable  at  the  supposed  seat  of  sen- 
sation.' ^     Now  what  is  meant  by  the  *  single  impression  of 
force '  which  we  are  told  is  thus  ^  manifestly  receivable  by  a 
sentient  being  devoid  of  mental  forms  P'      According  to 
the  meaning  assigned  to  it,  the  proposition  becomes  either  a 
truism  or  a  fallacy.     ^  Grant  sensibility,  and  a  sensation  is 
possible ;  grant  a  nervous  system,  and  a  nervous  irritation, 
constituting  a  change  from  the  previous  state  of  the  system, 
is  possible ' — so  far  we  have  only  a  truism.    It  becomes  a 
fallacy  when  sensation  is  rendered  into '  impression  of  force,' 
and  nervous  irritation  into  a  ^  presentation  of  some  force  at 
the  seat  of  sensation ; '  for  this  rendering,  understood  as  it 
must  be  understood  if  it  is  to  serve  the  purpose  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  theory,  implies  that  for  sensation  is  substituted  a 
judgment  that  force  is  being  exercised.    The  ^  impression  of 
force '  in  fact  covers  three  meanings.     It  may  mean  either 
(a)  the  occurrence  of  a  certain  event  in  the  way  of  feeling, 
or  {b)  the  conditions  of  such  an  event,  or  (c)  the  judgment 
that  it  has  occuired  and  been  conditioned  in  a  certain  way. 
It  is  only  by  an  equivocation  between  these  essentially  dif- 
ferent meanings  that  Mr.  Spencer  can  find  acceptance  for 
the  dictum  that '  matter,  as  opposing  our  muscular  energies, 
is  immediately  present  to  consciousness  in  terms  of  force.' 
A  force,  *  presented  at  the  seat  of  sensation,'  is  felt  simply  as 
a  sensation.    The  sensation  may  be  of  a  kind  which  we  come 
to  explain  as  one  of  pressure,  or  effort,  or  resistance ;  but  in 
itself,  i.e.  apart  from  relations  which  are  not  feelings  or  felt, 
it  is  not  a  force  any  more  than  a  vision  of  colour  is  a  vibra- 
tion of  ether.    We  may  say,  if  we  like,  that  though  *on  the 
subjective  side  '  it  is  a  feeling,  yet  *  on  the  objective  'it  is  a 
particular  exercise  of  force.     But  it  is  quite  another  thing 
to  say  that,  as  *  received  by  a  being  devoid  of  mental  forms,' 

'  First  Ffinciples,  §  60. 


MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER  435 

it  distinguishes  these  opposite  aspects  of  itself.  We  may 
not  so  far  confuse  the  two  sides  as  to  suppose  that  the  feel- 
ing is  for  a  merely  sentient  subject  that  which  perhaps  it 
really  and  objectively  is,  but  which  it  is  only  for  the  intelli- 
gent subject :  and  we  are  making  this  confusion  when,  on 
the  ground  that  the  feeling  is  understood  as  being  and  really 
is  an  effect  of  force,  we  take  it  to  be  a  feeling  of  force.  A 
feeling  of  force  can  only  mean  some  consciousness  of  force, 
and  a  consciousness  of  force  implies  at  least  consciousness  of 
a  change — i.e.  of  a  succession  of  states  in  something  other 
than  any  of  the  states — which  the  force  produces.  Now  the 
characteristic  of  a  feeling,  as  an  event  which  force  produces, 
is  that  it  is  a  state  succeeding  another  state.  But  of  suc- 
cessive states  no  one,  and  no  number,  can  be  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  succession.  No  feeling,  then,  as  an  effect  of  force 
undetermined  by  *  mental  forms '  other  than  itself,  can  be  a 
consciousness  of  a  relation  of  succession  between  it  and  other 
such  feelings  or,  consequently,  a  consciousness  of  itself  as  a 
change.  Thus,  though  it  be  ^  on  its  objective  side,'  a  change 
produced  by  force,  a  feeling  cannot  *  on  its  objective  side,' 
unless  the  subject  thinks  in  feeling,  be  a  consciousness  of 
itself  either  as  such  a  change  or  as  a  force  producing  a 
change.  In  other  words,  it  cannot  be  a  consciousness  either 
of  external  force  or  of  muscular  energy.  It  cannot  with 
strict  propriety  be  called  an  impression  of  force  at  all. 

An  objector  may  perhaps  ask  by  what  right  we  restrict 
the  use  of  '  feeling '  to  express  a  state  succeeding  another 
state,  and  why  it  should  not  also  express  that  consciousness 
permanent  throughout  the  states,  and  distinguishing  itself 
from  them,  which  is  necessary  to  the  interpretation  of  them 
as  a  process  of  change,  and  thus  as  a  manifestation  of  force. 
The  answer  is  that  there  is  of  course  no  intrinsic  objection  to 
the  use  of  feeling,  or  any  other  word,  in  any  sense  whatever, 
but  that  we  may  not  take  feeling  at  once  to  be  such  a  con- 
sciousness, and  to  be  that  of  which  the  '  objective  side,'  or 
formal  cause,  is  a  nervous  irritation  or  transmission  of  force. 
If  it  is  the  change  produced  by  a  transmission  of  force — a 
feeling  to  which  a  previous  feeling  has  given  place — it  cannot 
also,  for  the  reason  given,  be  the  consciousness  of  the  change. 
Yet  Mr.  Spencer's  theory  requires  it  to  be  both.  Peeling 
must  be  these  incompatible  things  :  it  must  at  once  be  the 
passing  state,  caused  through  nervous  irritation. by  the  exer- 

P  F  2 


486  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

cise  of  a  force,  and  the  consciousDess  of  relation  between  sacli 
states  as  so  caused,  if  it  is  to  yield  immediate  evidence — 
evidence  independent  of  *  ideal  constructions ' — either  of  ego 
or  nofi-090  as  exercising  force. 
As  Mr.  58.  Admissions  are  occasionally  made  by  Mr.  Spencer  him- 

Spen<^      g^if^  which  in  a  more  coherent  writer  would  imply  some 
Beems         approach  to  a  recognition  of  this  equivocation.     Thus  in  the 
sometiineB   immediate  sequel  of  the  passage  on  which  we  have  been  com- 
^^recog-     ujQQ^ing^  jjg  proceeds — *  Though  no   single   impression  of 
force  so  received '  (i.e.  received  by  a  sentient  being  devoid  of 
mental  forms)  'could  itself  produce  consciousness,  which 
implies  relations  between  different  states,  yet  a  multiplica- 
tion of  such  impressions,  differing  in  kind  and  degree,  would 
give  the  materials  for  the  establishment  of  relations,  {.6.  of 
thought.    And  if  such  relations  differed  in  their  forms,  as 
well  as  in  their  contents,  the  impressions  of  such  forms  would 
be  organised  simultaneously  with  the  impressions  they  con- 
tained.    Thus  all  other  modes  of  consciousness  are  derivable 
from  experiences  of  force.' 

Now  that  they  are  so  derivable,  if  the  *  experience  of  force  * 
is  to  be  understood  as  involving  all  that  in  the  two  previous 
sentences  has  been  assigned  to  it,  is  what  no  one  would  care 
to  dispute.  The  real  question  is  whether  such  an  experience 
of  force  is  itself  an  effect  of  force,  and  whether  the  conscious- 
ness in  which  it  consists  is  derivable  from  such  impressions 
of  force  as  Mr.  Spencer  previously  told  us  were  *  manifestly 
receivable  by  a  sentient  being  devoid  of  mental  forms.'  *  No 
single  impression  so  received,'  it  now  appears,  *  could  itself 
produce  consciousness.'  At  first  sight  this  statement  might 
seem  to  imply  that  the  *  impression  of  force '  is  not  to  be 
understood  as  a  feeling  at  all.  What  meaning,  it  may  be 
asked,  can  there  be  in  a  statement  that  a  single  feeling,  a 
state  of  consciousness,  cannot  produce  consciousness  P  Must 
not  '  impression  of  force '  be  here  taken  to  mean,  not  a  feel- 
ing as  felt,  but  the  nervous  irritation  transmitting  force, 
which  is  its  cause  9  Such  questions,  however,  turn  upon  a 
distinction  which,  as  we  have  seen,  Mr.  Spencer  ignores.  If 
by  an  *  impression  of  force '  he  understood  anything  distinct 
from  feeling,  he  would  not  in  the  same  sentence  have  spoken 
of  it  as  '  a  presentation  at  the  seat  of  sensation.'  He  under- 
stands by  it,  in  fact,  neither  the  ^  molecular  change '  in  the 
nervous  system  producing  a  state  of  consciousness,  as  distinct 


MR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  487 

from  the  state  of  consciousness  so  produced,  nor  the  state 
of  consciousness  aa  distinct  from  the  molecular  change,  but 
something  which  is  indifferently  both  or  either  of  them.  If 
we  took  his  statements  strictly,  we  should  be  left  in  doubt 
whether,  in  saying  that  no  single  impression  of  force  can 
produce  consciousness,  he  meant  more  than  that,  since  (aa 
he  afterwards  puts  it)  ^  consciousness  consists  of  changes,'  iJie 
non-ego,  as  force,  must  haye  produced  more  feelings  than  one 
before  it  could  make  a  consciousness. 

59.  To    say,    however,   that    consciousness    ^consists   of  In  any  ease 
changes,'  or  *  implies  relations  between  different  states,'  does  ^*^^^ 
not  accurately  express  either  the  truth,  or,  as  we  venture  to  changes, 
think,  what  Mr.  Spencer  means  to  say  about  it.    A  state-  ^j^n^^Q/***" 
ment  to  the  effect  that,  since  consciousness  is  a  noun  of  them: 
multitude  standing  for  a  multiplicity  of  feelings,  one  feeling 
cannot  constitute  what  is  so  called,  would  scarcely  be  worth 
making.     In  that  sense  of  consciousness  in  which  alone  it 

can  be  said  with  any  significance  that  a  single  feeling,  ^  re* 
ceived  by  a  subject  void  of  mental  forms,'  does  not  produce 
or  constitute  it,  consciousness  not  merely  implies  relations 
between  different  states :  that  might  be  said  of  the  line  which 
my  pen  is  writing :  it  is  a  recognition  of  these  different  states 
as  related.  It  not  merely  consists  of  changes,  but  is  a  con- 
sciousness of  itself  as  a  subject  of  change.  And  the  essential 
question  is  whether  this  cognition  of  change,  which  is  implied 
no  less  in  the  most  elementary  experience  of  force  than  in 
the  most  abstracted  self-consciousness,  can  be  any  more  con- 
stituted by  a  multiplication  of  feelings,  which  we  will  pro- 
visionally allow  to  be  effects  of  force,  than  by  one  of  these 
singly. 

60.  This  question  is  not  touched  by  Mr.  Spencer.  *  The  Which 
multiplication  of  impressions  differing  in  kind  and  degree,'  ^°?f^^ 
he  tells  us,  ^  would  give  the  materials  for  the  establishment  of  from  any 
relations,  i.e.  of  thought.'  Upon  this  we  have  to  ask  whether  muitipi;- 
itis  meant  (a)  that  the  multiplied  impressions  are  recognised  feeiinga: 
by  the  subject  of  them  as  differing  in  kind  and  degree,  and 

(b)  that  the  relations,  which  come  to  be  established,  are  under- 
stood or  (at  least)  perceived  relations — relations  of  which 
there  is  a  consciousness  on  the  part  of  the  subject  of  the 
related  impressions.  If  the  passage  quoted  is  to  be  other 
than  tautological,  the  former  part  of  the  question  must  be 
answered  in  the  negative,  the  latter  in  the  afiirmative. 


438  MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

Differences  in  kind  and  degree  between  impressions  already 
are  relations;  impressions  recognised  aa  differing  in  kind 
and  degree  imply  already  a  consciousness  of  relation,  ue. 
thought.  If,  then,  the  passage  is  to  mean  anything  more 
than  that  relations  give  the  materials  for  the  establishment 
of  relations,  or  that  the  consciousness  of  relations  gives  the 
materials  for  the  establishment  of  such  consciousness,  it  mast 
mean  that  the  multiplication  of  impressions,  differing  in  kind 
and  degree  but  not  recognised  as  so  differing  by  the  subject 
of  them — differing  merely  as  the  successive  atmospheric  in* 
fluences  to  which  a  plant  is  subject — would  give  the  materials 
for  the  establishment  of  the  consciousness  of  relations,  i.e,  of 
thought.  And  upon  this  the  remark  is  obvious  that,  though 
in  such  multiplied  impressions  we  may  indeed  have  *  materials 
for  the  establishment  of  relations,  i.e.  of  thought,'  yet  in  the 
absence  of  thought  which,  ex  hypothesis  has  yet  to  be  esta- 
blished, there  is  nothing  to  effect  the  establishment.  We  cannot 
suppose  the  mere  multiplication  of  the  impressions  to  effect  it 
without  tacitly  supposing  that  they  are,  to  begin  with,  recog- 
nised as  differing  in  kind  and  degree — ^that  they  are,  in  &cty 
not  changing  impressions,  but  a  consciousness  of  change ;  and 
this  is  to  anticipate  the  establishment  in  question,  and  to 
invest  them  with  the  form,  to  which  at  the  same  time  they 
are  opposed  as  being  merely  materials. 
Unless  (as  61.  There  can  be  little  doubt,  however,  that  Mr.  Spencer 
by  Mr.  ^Q^g  xnake  this  supposition,  and  that  the  correct  interpreta- 
it  is  tion  of  the  passage  before  us  is  that  which  reduces  it  to  a 

^^^^l .  tautology.  Just  as  he  thinks  of  the  single  feeling,  *  received 
thenu  by  ^  subject  devoid  of  mental  forms,'  as  an  impression  of 
force,  at  the  very  time  when  he  is  admitting  that  it  does  not 
amount  to  the  process  of  change  which  the  impression  of 
force  presupposes,  so  he  thinks  of  the  multiplication  of 
impressions  as  already  involving  a  recognition  of  their  rela- 
tions, even  when  he  is  treating  of  it  as  the  efficient  cause 
which  is  gradually  to  result  in  such  recognition.  The  one 
consciousness,  equally  present  to,  yet  distinguishing  itself 
from,  successive  feelings,  without  which  there  could  be  no 
such  synthesis  of  them  as  is  necessary  to  a  recognition  of 
their  difference  in  kind  and  degree,  and  to  their  constituting 
a  consciousness  of  change,  is  first  taken  for  granted  and  then 
represented  as  resulting  from  the  synthesis  which  presup- 
poses  it.     It  must  be  presupposed,  in  order  to  the  possibility 


MR.  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  439 

of  feelings  being  held  together  as  related  by  the  subject  which 
experiences  them,  and  except  as  so  held  together  they  give 
no  '  materials  for  its  establishment.'  In  truth,  if  they  are 
to  be  called*its  materials  at  all,  it  can  only  be  as  an  Aristo- 
telian Svvafiis,  to  which  the  corresponding  ivipysva  is  '  prior.' 
As  mere  materials  of  it,  they  have  as  little  reality  as  any 
other  '  matter '  in  abstraction  from  *  form.'  Here,  as  else- 
where, Mr.  Spencer's  ^  psychogenesis '  is  an  a£Pair  of  nomen- 
clature. He  assumes  as  materials  certain  elementary  feelings, 
which  are  in  fact  nothing  at  all  apart  from  determination  in 
a  system  of  self-consciousness,  or  in  a  correlative  conscious- 
ness of  nature,  and  to  which  both  he  and  his  readers  really 
ascribe  the  character  derived  from  such  determination.  He 
then  traces  a  genesis  out  of  them  of  the  system  which  they 
presuppose.  So  long  as  he  can  find  one  set  of  terms  for  the 
^  materials '  in  their  fictitious  abstraction,  another  for  the 
supposed  concrete  result — as  here  the  materials  are  called 
^  multiplied  impressions  differing  in  kind  and  degree,'  the 
result  a  ^  consciousness  implying  relations  between  different 
states ' — he  takes  and  is  allowed  the  credit  of  having  made 
a  discovery  in  the  natural  history  of  mind. 

62.  So  &r,  then,  we  have  found  no  help  from  Mr.  Spencer  Without 
in  regard  to  the  question  whether  the  consciousness,  called  J^*?  P***" 
experience  of  force,  is  itself  an  effect  of  force.     This  is  the  experience 
question  which  must  be  answered  affirmatively  if,  under  any  ?^^^  ^ 
transfiguration,  we  are  to  accept  the  doctrine  that  (in  vulgar  an  efibctof 
language)  mind  tells  us  of  matter  as  acting  upon  it,  as  the  ^'^^^^ 
source  of  its  being  what  it  is.     In  favour  of  an  affirmative 
answer  at  first  sight  is  the  apparent  possibility  of  treating 
our  several  successive  feelings  as  events  of  which  the  invari- 
able antecedents  are  nervous  irritations  produced  by  force. 
Against  it  is  the  difficulty — to  say  the  least — of  so  tareating 
the  synthetic  principle  without  which  the  successive  feelings 
could  not,  for  the  subject  of  them,  be  determined  by  mutual 
relation,  and  thus  could  not  form  the  consciousness  of  change 
which  that  of  force  presupposes.     Mr.  Spencer  ignores  this 
synthetic  principle.     Confusing  succession  of  feelings  with 
cognition  of  succession,  changes  of  consciousness  with  con- 
sciousness of  change,  he  virtually  supposes  the  feelings,  as 
apart  from  it,  to  be  that  which  they  doubtless  really  are,  but 
which  they  only  are  in  relation  to  it.    He  then  extracts  from 
then),  as  the  result  of  their  multiplication  and  through  them 


440  MR  SPENCER  ON  TEDE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER. 

the  result  of  force,  that  unified  conscioiuiness  which  they  must 
be  in  order  to  become.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  this 
paralogistic  procedure  is  essential  or  accidental  to  his  doc- 
trine. Can  the  experience  of  force  be  treated  as  an  effect  of 
force  without  it? 
Three  63.  This  question  will  be  found  to  inyolye  the  following : — 

^'^**i^^  (a)  Can  the  *  synthetic  principle'  spoken  of  be  dispensed 
this,  am-  with  altogether  as  a  formative  condition  of  experience  9  (fr)  If 
^'««0Ti8ly  not,  can  it  be  shown  to  be,  though  primary  in  consciousness, 
by  physical  ^  much  an  effect  of  force  (or,  at  any  rate,  of  physical  ante- 
psycho-  cedents)  as  the  successive  feelings  are  supposed  to  be ;  or  (c) 
°^'*  to  be  not  primary  at  all,  but  to  result  from  them — to  result 
from  them  in  the  proper  sense  and  without  covert  presuppo- 
sition of  itself  9  Li  the  current  psychologies,  which  attempt 
a  physical  theory  of  the  origin  of  mind,  these  questions  as 
occasion  requires  are  all  implicitly  answered  in  the  affirma- 
tive. To  render  the  answers  explicit  is  the  best  criticism  of 
the  theory  which  involves  them.  We  shall  not  expect,  of 
course,  to  find  any  philosophical  writer  who,  haying  dis- 
tinctly asked  himself  whether  or  no  experience  (in  the  shape 
of  an  experience  of  force,  or  any  other)  is  a  mere  succes- 
sion of  feelings,  void  of  a  unifying  principle,  has  distinctly 
answered,  yes.  By  help  of  sundry  familiar  figures — ^those  of 
the  thread,  the  stream,  &c. — our  psychologists  avoid  the 
ultimate  analysis  by  which  the  question  is  necessarily  raised, 
and  are  able  by  turns  to  avail  themselves  of  a  virtually 
affirmative  and  a  virtually  negative  answer  to  it.  The  phrase 
^  states  of  consciousness/  as  equivalent  to  feelings,  has  come 
conveniently  into  fashion  as  a  further  shelter  for  the  ambi- 
guity. We  cannot  employ  this  phrase  of  feelings  without 
implying  the  persistence  of  a  subject  throughout  them,  their 
relation  to  which  forms  their  nexus  with  each  other.  Thus 
by  the  use  of  it  the  physical  psychologist  can  disguise  that 
disintegration  of  experience  which  is  logically  involved  in  its 
reduction  to  a  succession  of  feelings,  corresponding  to  a 
series  of  occurrences  in  the  nervous  organism.  The  em- 
barrassment, which  might  be  caused  by  a  demand  for  a 
physiological  account  of  this  persistent  subject,  he  can  avoid 
by  saying  that  to  him  experience  is  merely  the  succession  of 
feelings.  The  question  which  might  then  arise,  as  to  the 
possibility  of  the  successive  feelings  being  also  an  experience 
of  succession,  he  can  take  out  of  his  critic's  mouth  by  the 


MR  SPENCER  ON  THE  INDEPENDENCE  OF  MATTER.  441 

assumption  that  feelings  are  states  of  conscionsness — states 
of  a  subject  which  recognises  them  as  its  successive  modes. 

64.  llie  critic  of  any  theory,  however,  should  make  it  his  of  which 
first  care  to  find  its  best  representative,  and  when  we  speak  ^^' 
of  physical  psychology,  we  may  properly  be  asked  what  f^ing) 
particular  statement  of  it  we  have  in  view.    We  are  examin-  ?^^^®'' 
ing  the  question  whether  our  experience  testifies  to  the  exponent. 
action  of  an  ^  independent  matter  '  or  ^  non-ego '  as  its  source, 
and  we  have  found  Mr.  Spencer's  answers  fail  us  owing  to 
his  defective  analysis  of  experience.   Before  we  assume,  how- 
ever, a  negative  answer  to  the  question  in  consequence,  we 
should  make  sure  whether  a  more  thorough  account  of  ex* 
perience  might  not  be  given,  which  would  avoid  the  confusions 
previously  noticed,  deal  fairly  by  the  questions  stated  at  the 
beginning  of  the  preceding  paragraph,  and  yet  be  compatible 
with  a  physical  tiieory  of  its  origin.    As  the  best  hope  of 
obtaining  such  an  account  we  propose  in  another  article  to 
torn  to  Mr.  Lewes,  in  whom  every  candid  critic  must  recog* 
nise  a  philosophical  writer  who  thoroughly  understands  his 
business,  and  in  whose  hands  no  doctrine  will  suffer  for  want 
of  the  best  possible  mode  of  statement.    If  in  him,  too,  we 
find  the  same  confusions  latent,  we  shall  have  strong  reason 
for  charging  them  upon  the  essential  nature  of  the  doctrine^ 
not  upon  its  exponent. 


442  MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENOIL 


PAET  m, 

KB.   LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPEBIEKOB. 

10  'esperi-  65.  The  ezainiiiation  of  Mr.  Spencer's  psychology  left  ns  in 
definedby  P^^^^^^®  ^^  ^  question  by  which  it  would  seem  that  all  pbysi- 
Hr.  Lewes,  cal  theories  of  the  origin  of  mind  must  be  tested.     In  what 
o/^'' d5!  ^^^9  ^^  ^^  ^  ^^9  ^  *^®  experience  of  matter  and  force 
calevente?  to  be  understood  if  it  is  to  be  explained  as  resulting  from  the 
action  of  matter  and  force  P     There  may  be  a  sense,  no 
doubt,  in  which,   as  Mr.  Spencer   says,  all  modes  of  con- 
sciousness are  derived  from  such  experience,  but  can  expe- 
rience of  that  kind  which  we  are  entitled  to  regard  as  the 
source  of  knowledge  and  thought  and  spiritual  life  be  in  turn 
explained  as  a  product  of  physical  causes?    Is  experience 
in  *  testifying '  to  the  existence  of  an  objective  world,  rightly 
held  to  testify  to  the  action  of  an  'independent  matter,' 
which  exists  before  thought  and  causes  it  9    Having  found 
Mr.  Spencer's  answers  to  these  questions  fail  us  owing  to 
his  defective  *  analysis  of  experience,  we  proposed  to  inquire 
whether  Mr.  Lewes'  statement  of  a  similar  theory  met  the 
difficulties  of  the  case  more  fairly. 

Experience  Mr.  Lewes  defines  as  the  registration  of  feel- 
ing. But  he  tells  us  also  that  'experience  is  subjective 
existence,'  and  that '  a  thing  exists  for  us  only  in  its  know- 
able  relations.'  '  Subjective  existence '  we  are  presumably 
entitled  to  take  as  equivalent  to  existence  in  and  for  con- 
sciousness. .  We  must  suppose  then  that  the  registration  of 
feeling  is  the  existence  for  consciousness  of  things  which  so 
exist  only  under  knowable  relations.  If  this  is  whal  is  to  be 
understood  by  *  registration  of  feeling,'  no  one  need  demur 
to  the  account  of  experience  as  such  registration ;  but  the 
question  arises  whether,  when  we  have  taken  feelings  to 
mean  things  constituted  by  knowable  relations,  and  their 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  448 

registration  to  mean  the  existence  of  snch  things  in  and  for 
consciousness^  the  physical  account  of  the  feelings  or  the 
registration — the  account  which  makes  them  effects  of  force 
through  nervous  excitation — any  longer  holds  good.  What 
that  account  explains  to  us  is  a  series  of  events,  transitory 
as  the  successive  stages  of  the  motion  which,  in  relation  to 
the  nervous  organism,  constitutes  them.  As  that  organism 
is  modified  through  the  events,  its  reaction  upon  stimulus 
becomes  different,  and  thus  the  nervous  or  psychical  events 
are  constantly  taking  a  new  character,  but  they  remain 
events  still,  nor  has  the  theory  in  question  any  place  for  a 
consciousness  which  does  not  consist  in  such  events.  Which, 
or  what  series,  of  these  events,  then,  in  the  absence  of  any 
conscious  subject  other  than  them,  is  a  knowable  relation  or 
a  thing  constituted  by  knowable  relations  9  Or  (to  put  the 
question  in  a  form  which  the  reader,  who  sees  no  difficulty 
about  the  preceding  one,  may  yet  find  hard  to  answer)  which, 
or  what  series,  of  them  is  an  existence  for  consciousness  of 
such  things  or  relations,  and  thus  an  experience  according  to 
Mr.  Lewes'  definition  ? 

.66,  Putting  our  question  in  the  first  of  the  above  forms.  They 
we  may  expect  to  find  it  met  by  a  reference  to  the  words  we  b^^eJte^ 
have  ourselves  used  in  speaking  of  the  supposed  psychical  but  for 
events.     They  are  constituted,  we  have  said,  by  some  sort  of  J^™^'^"* 
motion  in  relation  to  a  nervous  organism.     What  meaning,  event: 
then,  can  there  be  in  asking  *  which  of  them  is  a  knowable 
relation  or  thing  constituted  by  relations  P '    The  answer  is 
that  the  relation  which  thus  constitutes  or  determines  the 
event  is  not  an  event  itself ;  that,  if  there  were  nothing  but 
events  passing  in  time,  there  could  be  no  relations.     The 
mere  relation  of  sequence  between  any  events  would  not  be 
possible  if  there  were  no  unit,  other  than  the  events  and  not 
passing  with  them,  through  relation  to  which  they  are  re- 
lated to  each  other,  and  the  same  is  even  more  plainly  true 
of  those  more  concrete  relations  from  which  events  derive 
their  real  character.     That  pyschical  events,  then,  really  are 
knowable  relations,  or  (more  properly)  that  the  reality  of 
every  snch  event  lies  in  a  knowable  relation,  is  not  in  dis- 
pute.    The  point  is  that  they  are  so  only  in  virtue  of  some- 
thing else  which  cannot  be  an  event,  and  which  no  account 
of  events  in  the  way  of  feeling  explains  to  us,  but  which 
alone  renders  possible  the  synthesis  of  one  order  of  events 


444  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

as  motioDy  of  another  as  a  nervous  system,  and  the  relation 
of  one  with  the  other. 
Nor  felt  67.  It  is  in  the  second  of  the  two  forms  given  above,  hovr« 

^raom^  ever,  that  onr  question  is  most  directly  challenged  by  Mr. 
thing  not  a  Lewes' doctrine.  The  reason  why  he  does  not  face  it  himself, 
feeUng.  ^  ^^  venture  to  think,  is  that  with  all  his  clearness  and 
thoroughness  he  is  still  in  the  bonds  of  that  ambignity  in 
regard  to  feeling  which  hitherto  dominates  all  empirical 
psychology.  He  does  not  distinguish  between  feeling  and 
felt  thing,  between  sensation  and  sensible  fact ;  or,  more 
particularly,  between  feeling  as  it  *  arises  in  the  sensible 
excitation  of  the  organism  by  something  acting  upon  it '  * — 
in  a  moment  arises  and  passes  away — and  the  fact  that  snch 
feeling  has  so  arisen,  a  fact  which  does  not  pass  vdth  the 
feeling  but  remains  as  a  permanent  constituent  in  a  world 
of  intelligible  objects.  To  one  who  allows  himself  to  treat 
this  fact  as  a  feeling  it  is  only  one  step  further  to  treat  all 
the  relations  of  the  fact  as  feelings  too.  Thus  any  object  of 
possible  perception  in  the  fulness  of  its  known  determinations 
is  a  feeling,  and  the  world  of  experience,,  the  *  cosmos  of  such 
objects,'  is  a  synthesis  of  feelings.  But  ^  a  feeling  arises  in 
the  sensible  excitation  of  the  organism  by  something  acting 
upon  it.'  Hence  the  world  of  experience  seems  to  be  ac^ 
counted  for  as  the  result  of  such  excitations.  It  is  not  asked 
how  a  synthesis  of  feelings,  in  that  sense  in  which  they  arise 
upon  nervous  excitation,  is  possible  in  the  absence  of  any 
mental  function  but  such  as  can  be  accounted  for  by  the 
excitation ;  and  the  reason  why  this  is  not  asked  is  that, 
when  we  talk  of  the  synthesis  of  feelings  as  constituting  the 
world  of  experience,  we  are  really,  though  without  recogni- 
tion  of  the  change,  thinking  of  something  quite  different 
from  the  feelings  which  arise  upon  excitation.  We  are 
thinking  of  the  perceived  or  perceivable  facts  that  such  and 
such  feelings  are  occurring,  have  occurred,  or  will  occur, 
under  certain  conditions.  Such  facts,  reduced  to  their 
utmost  simplicity,  are  already  syntheses — syntheses  of  present 
feeling  with  past,  of  passing  stages  of  a  feelmg  which  we 
think  as  one,  of  feelings  concurrent  but  distinguished  by 
successive  acts  of  attention,  in  one  presentation  to  conscious- 
ness. The  synthesis  of  these  syntheses,  indeed,  need  not 
give  us  much  concern.    Account  for  perception,  and  concep- 

*  Problems  of  Life  and  Mindy  i.  191. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCK  445 

tion  will  take  care  of  itself.  It  is  the  primitiYe  unification, 
which  goes  to  constitute  the  perceived  object  as  distinct  from 
occTurences  of  feeling,  that  forms  the  real  problem ;  and  it 
is  just  this  which  our  psychologists  will  so  seldom  con- 
descend to  notice. 

68.  The  primary  question,  then,  by  which  Mr.  Lewes'  Unity  of 
doctrine  is  to  be  tried  is  not  whether  feelings  can  properly  J^^^-^  ^ha 
be  said  to  be  caused  or  constituted  by  neural  tremors,  but  condition 
whether,  as  so  constituted,  they  form,  or  come  to  form,  such  a  ^^^^ 
consciousness  of  fact  as  in  its  turn  can  be  a  basis  or  begin-  sion  of 
ning  of  intelligent  experience.    Can  that  which,  *  viewed  on  J*'*^  , 

ji  .!.•■. -I-     i-i  .  t*  1.  11    tremors/ 

the  physiological  side,  is  the  succession  of  neural  tremors,"  andof*dif- 
viewed  on  any  other  side  be  the  unity  of  consciousness,  and,  J?"*^^^*" 
aparfc  from  this  unity,  would  ^  our  Cosmos,'  the  phenomenal  feeling.' 
world,  be  possible  P  The  answer  to  this  question,  which  we 
shall  try  to  make  good,  is  that,  if  it  can  be  so  viewed  (and 
till  we  have  examined  more  closely  what  is  implied  in  this 
figure  of  the  two  aspects  it  would  be  premature  to  decide 
that  it  cannot),  it  is  only  in  virtue  of  the  unity  of  conscious- 
ness itself,  which,  having  rendered  possible  alike  the  syn- 
thesis of  one  sort  of  phenomena  as  a  succession  of  tremors, 
and  that  of  another  sort  as  the  *  differentiation  of  feeling,* 
in  turn  combines  both  syntheses  as  ^  two  sides '  of  one  and 
the  same  reality ;  that  thus,  if  the  unity  of  intelligent  con- 
sciousness be  the  ^  other  side '  of  the  succession  of  tremors, 
it  is  certainly  not  its  product,  nor  that  of  the  Force  by  which 
this  succession  is  explained,  but  the  privs  or  presupposition 
of  their  existence,  as  an  existence  for  us ;  that,  in  short, 
while  every  other  *  many-in-one '  is  a  many-in-one  for  con- 
sciousness, consciousness  is  a  many-in-one  for  iteelf,  which 
cannot  logically  be  derived  firom  those  combinations  of 
phenomena  which,  alike  as  phenomena  and  as  combined^ 
only  exist  for  it. 

69.  In  seeking  to  maintain  this  doctrine  against  Mr.  Lewes  Mr.  Lewes' 
we  are  at  first  embarrassed  by  admissions  which  seem  to  f^^^^^ 
imply  that  it  is  his  own.     The  conception  that  ^  our  world  partly  re- 
arises  in  consciousness,'  he  tells  us,  *  is  the   conquest  of  ^^'■*"' 
modern  speculation ; '  ^  and  though  he  insiste  much  on  what  ignores, 
no  one  is  likely  to  deny,  that  consciousness  implies  an  objec-  *^**  P"**" 
tive  as  well  as  a  subjective  factor,  he  tells  us  also  that  ^  the 

»i.  119.  «ii.  12. 


448  MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

objective  world,  with  its  manifold  variations,  is  the  differen- 
tiation of  existence  due  to  Feeling  and  Thought.'  ^  But  then 
with  him  that  which  thus  differentiates  existence  is  itself 
a  result  of  physical  evolution.     Thought  and   feeling  are 
processes  of  *  neural  tremor/  constantly  taking  new  deter- 
minations through  growing  complexity  of  *  irradiation '  and 
reaction..    They  have  thus  a  natural  history,  the  same  in 
principle  with  that  of  all  other  forms  of  organic  life,  pro- 
duced by  an  existence  differentiated  (as  we  have  to  suppose) 
otherwise  than  by  feeling  and  thought — an  existence  which, 
as  prior  to  and  independent  of  consciousness,  can  only  be 
*  objective '  in  a  precisely  opposite  sense  to  the  objective  exist- 
ence spoken  of  above ;  in  that  peculiar  sense,  indeed,  in  which 
there  can  be  an  object  without  a  subject.     It  is  one  of  the 
consequences  of  Mr.  Lewes'  philosophy — which,  one  would 
have  hoped,  might  have  led  him  to  reconsider  it — ^that  he  is 
obliged  to  speak  of  the  objective  world  in  these  antithetical 
senses.    On  turning  to  his  pages  from  Mr.  Spencer's  blind 
polemic  against '  Idealism,'  we  are  at  first  relieved  to  find 
the  correlativity  and   mutual    dependence  of   object  and 
subject  duly  recognised.     It  soon  appears,  however,  that  his 
theory  of  the  physical  derivation  of  consciousness  obliges 
him  to  suppose  the  existence  of  an  object '  which  is  not  the 
other  side  of  the  subject,  but  the  larger  circle  which  includes 
it' — an  object,  it  would  seem,  so  called  on  the  liicua  a  non 
hicendo  principle,  as  that  which  is  objective  to  nothing.     To 
such  an  *  object '  none  of  the  predicates  representing  relations 
of  the  world  which  we  know — the  objective  world  which  is 
the  other  side  of  the  subject-consciousness — can  be  appli- 
cable.    It  is  equivalent  to  the  unknowable,  of  which  Mr. 
Spencer  makes  so  much  cheap  mystery.     Yet,  just  as  Mr. 
Spencer,  by  help  of  the  convenient  though  self-contradictory 
phrase,  *  manifestations  of  the  unknowable,'  is  able  at  once 
to  assume  a  world  not  relative  to  consciousnesss,  and   to 
describe  a  derivation  of  consciousness  from  it  under  terms 
only  significant  in  application  to  a  world  which  is  so  relative, 
so  Mr.  Lewes'  whole  theory  of  a  process  by  which  conscious- 
ness, as  yet  not  existent,  is  evolved,  is  a  deduction  of  the 
world  which  is  objective  in  the  intelligible  sense  from  that 
which  is  so  in  no  intelligible  sense  at  all,  under  terms  only 
applicable  to  the  former. 

» ii.  16. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  447 

70.  Believing,  then,  that  there  is  an  essential  discrepancy  Oompeti- 
between  Mr.  Lewes'  psychology  and  his  *psychogeny' —  ^^«  .  . 
between  his  doctrine  of  the  world  as  arising  in  consciousness  his  psyched 
on  the  one  hand,  and  his  physiological  deriyation  of  con-  logy, 
scionsness  with  its  world  from  something  independent  of  it 
on  the  other — we  shall  consider  the  psychology  first.  It 
may  turn  out  that  in  this,  too,  there  is  a  competition  between 
incongruoas  elements,  a  truer  and  a  less  true,  and  that  only 
through  the  preyalence  of  the  less  true  does  it  lend  itself  to 
a  delusive  psychogeny.  As  the  symbol  of  the  truer  way  of 
thinking  we  should  venture  to  adopt  the  dictum  that '  things 
are  groups  of  relations ; '  ^  as  that  of  the  less  true,  the  dic- 
tum that  ^  the  real  is  what  is  given  in  feeling,'  or  that  ^  the 
content  of  all  experience  is  Feeling.'  If  these  statements 
are  to  be  reconcilable,  it  is  clear  a  feeling  must  be  a  relation 
or  group  of  relations.  Perhaps  it  is  so ;  but  before  we  admit 
that  it  is  we  should  be  quite  clear  what  we  are  about  in 
making  the  admission.  Let  us  consider,  then,  certain  pas- 
sages in  which  Mr.  Lewes'  doctrine  on  the  matter  is  most 
compactly  stated  : — ^  The  basis  and  content  of  all  experience 
is  Feeling.  Beflecting  on  this,  and  analysing  Feeling  into 
its  components,  we  find  it  always  presenting  a  Two-fold 
aspect,  real  and  ideal,  actual  and  virtual,  particidar  and 
general.  Existence  is  real  when  felt  or  perceived  y  ideal 
when  imaged  [Le.  when  a  feeling  is  reproduced  by  an  inter- 
nal stimulus,  and  not  by  an  external  stimulus)  or  Conceived 
(i,e.  when  feelings  are  represented  in  symbols).  By  the 
Eeal  is  meant  whatever  is  given  in  Feeling ;  by  the  Ideal  is 
meant  what  is  virtually  given,  when  the  process  of  Inference 
anticipates  and  intuites  what  will  be  or  would  be  Feeling 
under  the  immediate  stimulus  of  the  object.  Aiiy  inference 
which  is  not  the  reproduction  of  feelings  formerly  produced 
is  erroneous ;  any  inference  which  cannot  be  realised  in  feel- 
ings is  illusory.'  ^ 

71.  Upon  this  the  obvious  remark,  for  which  a  writer  of  -g^s  'ideal' 
Mr.  Lewes'  acuteness  must  be  prepared,  is  that  it  takes  as  a  aspect  of 
constant  component  of  feeling  that  which  is  declared  not  to  ^^^  " 
be  felt  at  all.     One  *  aspect '  which  every  feeling  *  presents  "  *  actual' 
is  *  ideal,'  and  the  ideal  is  opposed  to  the  real  as  the  actually  ^^jjj^l*^' 
unfelt  to  the  actually  felt.    It  would  seem  to  be  a  charac-  ment,  u. 

'  ii.  44.  *  ii.  16.  difference  between  *  Feeling  always  pw-   °?  ^^^ 

'  As  there  is  no  charm  in  capital      sents '  and  '  every  feeling  presents/ 
letters,  it  is  presumed  that  there  is  no 


448  MR.   LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

teristio  of  the  real,  then,  that  one  '  aspect,'  or,  to  use  the 
less  ambiguous  word,  one  component,  of  it  is  unreal.  Mr. 
Lewes,  it  will  be  replied,  has  guarded  himself  against  this 
objection  by  pointing  out  that,  though  ^  the  ideal '  is  not 
actually  *  given  in  feeling,'  it  is  so  '  virtually,'  being  merely 
an  anticipation  of  *  what  will  be  or  would  be  feeling  under 
the  immediate  stimulus  of  the  object.'  But  of  a  ^  virtual ' 
feeling,  we  can  only  repeat  what  we  have  said  before  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  ^  potential  states  of  consciousness.'  ^  To  be  but 
virtually  felt  is  not  to  be  felt  at  all.  If  *  ideal  existence,' 
indeed,  means  what  according  to  Mr.  Lewes  it  means  when 

*  ideal '  is  equivalent  to  *  imaged,'  viz.  *  a  feeling  reproduced 
by  an  internal  stimulus,'  it  is  doubtless  felt,  but  such  a 
feeling  there  is  no  ground  for  distinguishing  as  *  virtual' 
from  the  '  actual '  component.  There  is  no  more  reason  for 
saying  that  it  is  not  *  actually '  a  feeling  on  account  of  the 
particular  character  of  the  stimulus  by  which  it  is  produced, 
than  there  would  be  for  saying  that  a  sound  was  not  an 
actual  feeling  because  produced  through  different  organs 
from  those  of  touch.  But  the  case  is  quite  different  with 
the  ^  anticipation '  spoken  of.  The  judgment  that  a  feeling 
will  or  would  occur  under  a  certain  condition  is  not  a  whit 
more  itself  a  feeling  for  the  fact  that  without  a  past  feeling 
it  would  not  have  been  arrived  at,  and  it  is  by  such  a  judg- 
ment that  we  must  mean  to  declare  a  feeling  to  be  deter- 
mined if  we  mean  anything  by  saying  that  one  aspect  of  it 
is  ideal  in  the  sense  of  being  but  virtually  a  feeling.    An 

*  inference '  of  this  kind  is  doubtless  *  illusory,'  unless  the 
feeling,  of  which  the  possibility  under  certain  conditions  ia 
inferred,  is  one  which  can  really  so  occur,  but  it  can  only  be 
through  some  hastiness  of  thought  or  expression  that, 
having  been  described  in  one  instance  as  an  anticipation  of 
what  will  or  would  be  feeling,  it  is  spoken  of  in  the  next  as 
a  reproduction  of  feelings.  If  the  feeling,  of  which  I  infer 
the  occurrence,  is  reproduced  in  the  inference,  what  remains 
to  be  anticipated?  It  will  be  answered,  perhaps,  that  in 
inference  a  feeling  is  reproduced  by  *  internal  stimulus,'  and 
that  what  is  anticipated  is  that  it  will  or  would  occur  ^  under 
the  immediate  stimulus  of  the  object ; '  but  this  view,  while 
it  introduces  a  feeling  as  ^actual'  as  any  other  into  that 
process  of    inference  which  is  described  as  forming  the 

I  Aboye,  §  47. 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  449 

*  yirtaal'  component  of  feeling,  still  leaves  as  characteristic 
of  the  process  just  that  which  is  qnite  other  than  feeling — 
the  distinction,  namely,  between  the  external  and  the  in- 
ternal, and  the  anticipation  that  what  is  now  being  produced 
by  an  internal  stimulus  will  under  certain  conditions  be  pro- 
duced by  an  external  one. 

72.  Thus  in  both  the  modes,  in  which  Mr.  Lewes  presents  ^ii«  his 
it,  the  *  ideal '  or  *  virtual '  component  of  feeling  eludes  us.  ^^^^  \f 

*  It  is  neither  fish  nor  flesh ;  a  man  knows  not  where  to  have  it  is  to  be 
it.*     As  imagined,  according  to  his  account,  it  is  as  '  actual '  J^nv^it^' 
as  any  feeling  can  be.    As  inference,  it  is  not  properly  a  Mdear 
component  of  feeling  at  all,  but  a  judgment,  by  which  feeling  *^®^^" 
is  determined,  as  to  the  conditions  under  which  a  feeling 

will  recur.  Nor  is  it  merely  in  virtue  of  this  *  ideal '  aspect 
that  feeling,  under  Mr.  Lewes'  treatment,  gains  the  benefit 
of  being  its  own  opposite.  The  '  actual '  component  itself  is 
described  in  a  manner  which  renders  it  indistinguishable 
from  the  *  ideal,'  and  it  is,  in  truth,  just  this  which  leads  to 
the  confusion  of  calling  the  ^  ideal '  its  reproduction.  *  Exist- 
ence,' we  are  told,  *  is  real  when  felt  or  perceived,'  but  a 
perceived  existence,  as  we  shall  find  from  Mr.  Lewes'  account 
of  it,  in  every  case  involves  the  *  aspect '  here  distinguished 
from  it  as  the  ideal  from  the  reaL  That  it  does  so,  we  do 
not  dispute ;  but  that  it  should  do  so  and  yet  be  no  more 
than  feeling,  is  quite  another  matter.  To  allow  this  is  to 
exclude  in  limine  the  only  valid  idealism — that  idealism 
which  trusts,  not  to  a  guess  about  what  is  beyond  experience, 
but  to  analysis  of  what  is  within  it.  If  so  much  in  experience 
— no  less  than  all  perceived  or  perceivable  existence — is 
acfcual  feeling,  the  di£Bculty  will  be,  not  to  reduce  the  rest  of 
it  to  the  same  description,  but  to  understand  in  what  sense 
any  *  component '  of  it,  in  distinction  from  this  *  real '  com- 
ponent, can  be  regarded  as  '  ideal '  at  all. 

73.  In  examining  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  about  the  relation  j^  f^^^ 
between  the  ^  faint  and  vivid  aggregates,'  we  have  abeady  he  ignores 
had  occasion  to  call  in  question  the  identification  of  actual  Jjlfctlra 
feeling  with  perceived  existence.^     To  admit  that  every  between 
perceived  fact  is  a  relation  to  feeling  or  between  feelings  "J^^n^ 
was  not,  we  saw,  to  admit  that  it  is  a  feeling  or  number  of  and  eon- 
feelings,  but,  on  the  contrary,  to  deny  it :  and  to  say  that  J^^°**" 
perception  is  the  cognisance  of  such  relation  was  to  spy  that  sion. 

»  Above.  §  34  ffi 
VOL.  I.  0  0 


460  MR.   LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCB. 

it  is  not  a  feeling.  This  view  we  hare  now  to  make  good 
against  Mr.  Lewes'  account  of  that '  Logic  of  Feeling/  which, 
according  to  him,  is  not  only  the  first  stage  in  the  oonstrac- 
tion  of  the  ^  Cosmos  of  Experience/  but  also  that  by  which 
the  complementary  *  Logic  of  Signs '  itself  must  be  rerifiable, 
if  it  is  to  be  other  than  illusory.  The  terms  of  this  Logic  of 
Feeling,  as  he  describes  it,  are  undoubtedly  perceived  facts. 
Are  they  also,  as  he  holds,  feelings  P 

At  the  risk  of  being  charged  with  a  repetition  of  super- 
subtle  refinements,  we  must  begin  with  recalling  the  essential 
distinction,  which  Mr.  Lewes'  account  of  the  'Logic  of 
Feeling '  seems  to  ignore,  between  a  succession  of  feelings, 
qualified  by  correlative  likeness  and  difference,  and  the 
consciousness  of  such  succession  and  qualification.  Let  us 
suppose  a  feeling  (a)  to  occur,  and  to  be  followed  by  another 
(b),  and  this  by  a  third  (c),  and  so  on.  Doubtless  it  is  only 
from  contrast,  i.e.  from  correlative  likeness  and  unlikeness 
to  a,  that  h  is  what  it  is ;  while  e  again  derives  its  character 
from  relation  to  h  and  through  it  to  a.  But  that  c  should 
be  determined  by  sequence  on  b,  or  this  by  sequence  on  a,  is 
quite  a  different  thing  from  either  being  a  consciousness  of 
the  determination  constituted  by  such  a  sequence.  We 
have  to  deny  of  such  a  consciousness  just  what  we  have  to 
assert  of  the  feelings.  They  are  sequent  and  contrasted. 
Sequence  and  contrast  make  them  what  they  are.  If  it,  on 
the  other  hand,  were  sequent  upon  any  one  or  all  of  them, 
it  could  not  be  present  to  them  all,  as  it  must  be  in  order  to 
be  a  consciousness  of  their  relation :  nor,  if  it  were  itself 
contrasted  with  any  one  of  them,  or  with  each  successively, 
could  it  reflect  the  contrast  of  each  with  the  rest  as  a  fiict  or 
objective  relation.  Any  one,  then,  who  likes  to  call  it 
*  feeling '  may  do  so,  but,  if  he  would  avoid  confxision,  he 
must  bear  in  mind  that  in  using  this  term  at  once  for  erents 
in  the  way  of  sense,  and  for  the  consciousness  of  relation 
between  them,  he  is  using  it  in  antagonistic  meanings.  The 
probability,  however,  is  that  he  will  fail  to  do  so.  He  will 
allow  himself  to  be  deceived  by  his  own  language,  and  in 
speaking  of  perception  or  intelligence  as  'feeling' — a 
'  feeling  of  the  relations  between  feelings ' — ^wiU  assume  it 
to  be  '  no  more  than  '  the  related  feelings.  He  thus  becomes 
a  victim  to  a  fiction  either  of  abstraction  or  of  addition. 
He  supposes  feelings  to  yield  either  by  repetition  or  as  an 


ascribed 
toil. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  451 

abstract  residnnm  a  consciousness  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
mnst  be  equally  operative  upon  and  other  than  each  of  them, 
in  order  to  their  becoming  the  materials  which  are  supposed 
to  yield  it. 

74.  It  is  such  a  confusion  which,  as  it  seems  to  us,  ^  Feel-  /.«.  the 
ing*  generally  represents   in  Mr.  Lewes'  text>  when  it  is  ^^^ 
dignified  with  a  capital  letter.    An  origin  is  assigned  to  it  feeling  u 
which  would  only  be  really  appropriate  to  events  in  the  way  inconj- 
of  sense,  and  at  the  same  time  a  function  only  appropriate  ^th  the 
to  the  consciousness  of  relation  between  such  events.    This  oHffm 
appears  in  the  following  passage  which  gives  the  essence  of 
the  *  Logic  of  Peeling ' : — *  We  have  not  only  Feeling,  but 
the  Logic  of  Feeling,  or  that  primary  operation  of  its  Rela- 
tivity by  which  differences  are  distinguished  from  resem- 
blances, as  the  necessary  consequence  of  that  process  of 
neural  grouping  which  is  the  physiological  condition  of 
feeling  •  •  .  or  of  that  process  of  change  in  the  relations 
which  is  the  psychological  condition  of  feeling.    That  is  to 
say,  unless  neural  units  are  grouped,  and  these  units  coalesce 
into  other  groups,  there  is  no  Sensation,  no  Perception,  no 
Conception.     XTnless  there  be  a  change  in  the  relations 
there  can  be  no  consciousness.   .   •  .  Change,  movement, 
grouping,  involve  two  terms  of  a  relation:   the  point  of 
departure  and  the  point  of  arrival.     When  a  present  feeling 
changes,  t.6.  passes  into  another,  the  movement  is  an  incor- 
poration of  tiie  two.     Hence  the  two  are  correlative.  .  •  • 
Although  in  one  aspect  every  feeling  is  particular   and 
synthetic — being  a  group,  an  integral — it  is  nevertheless  a 
synthesis  of  elements  which  analysis  discloses  as  involving 
correlatives.   To  be  felt  or  known  as  a  distinct  group,  it  must 
reflect  its  correlative  from  which  it  is  distinguished'  (ii.  16, 17). 

Now  what  is  the  Feeling  which  possesses  the  *  Relativity ' 
here  spoken  of "?  As  that  term  scarcely  explains  itself,  we 
have  to  examine  the  functions  afterwards  assigned  to  it,  and 
to  Feeling  as  that  which  possesses  or  exercises  it.  It  is 
apparently  a  consciousness  of  contrast,  of  sequence,  and  of 
the  combination  of  the  sequent.  It  is  a  consciousness  for 
which  *  a  present  feeling  changes,'  ue.  passes  into  another, 
and  for  which  there  is  thus  constituted  a  *  movement  which 
is  the  incorporation  of  the  two.'  From  passages  in  the 
immediate  sequel  we  leam  further  that  it  is  a  feeling  which 
is  the  unity  of  discontinuous  states,  that  in  it  consciousness 

a  o  2 


452 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 


For'fed- 
iDg  of  re- 
lations ' 
cannot 
arise  (1) 
from 

•grouping 
of  neural 
unito.' 


and  the  Cosmos  are  alike  implicit,  that  in  its  varieties  it 
contains  our  Universe,  which  it  is  'forced  by  the  law  of 
Eelativity  to  separate  into  object  and  subject.'  It  is  in  short 
what  Mr.  Lewes  elsewhere  <^8  a  '  Feeling  of  the  relations 
between  feelings.' '  The  question  then  arises  whether  the 
Feeling,  to  which  such  functions  can  be  ascribed,  is  anything 
which  can  rightly  be  called  a  necessary  consequence  of  the 

*  physiological '  and  '  psychological '  conditions  spoken  of  in 
the  above  passages. 

75.  First  as  to  the  physiological  condition.  This,  we  are 
told,  is  *  a  process  of  neural  grouping,'  or  '  a  grouping  of 
neural  units.'  What,  then,  are  the  'neural  units 'P  Are 
they  the  several  nervous  tremors  which  go  to  produce  a 
single  sensuous  impression,  or  are  they  single  impressions  so 
produced  9  If  they  are  the  former,  they  may  perhaps  pro- 
perly be  said  to  be  '  grouped,*  but  their  grouping  will  not 
account  for  the  consciousnesa  in  question.     Certain  tremors 

*  grouped '  will  produce  a  specific  event  in  the  way  of  feeling, 
certain  others  grouped  will  produce  another  such  event.  The 
two  groups  may  coalesce,  but  the  product  can  only  be  a  third 
specific  event  in  the  way  of  feeling,  not  a  consciousness  which, 
retaining  the  two  former  feelings  as  distinct  and  equally 
present  to  itself,  correlates  them  as  a  change  or  movement. 
It  will  be  a  related  feeling — relatedy  that  is  to  say,  on  suppo- 
sition of  there  being  a  permanent  subject  to  render  its  rela- 
tion to  other  feelings  possible — not  a  '  feeling '  of  relation. 

Whether  physiology  properly  knows  of  any  grouping  of 
neural  units,  or  coalition  of  groups,  but  such  as  the  above, 
may  fairly  be  doubted.  Let  us  suppose,  however,  that  by  the 
neural  unit  is  meant  not  the  single  tremor  but  the  single  feel- 
ing. The  question  will  then  be  how  such  units,  in  the  absence 
"of  a  unit  other  than  them,  but  to  which  they  shall  all  be 
related,  can  be  grouped  at  all;  and,  on  supposition  that 
such  grouping  is  possible,  whether  it  would  constitute  the 
consciousness  of  relation  required.  It  may  be  surmised  that 
in  the  mind  of  many  readers  of  Mr.  Lewes,  if  not  in  his  own, 
the  failure  to  ask  distinctly  whether  the  neural  unit  means 
the  single  tremor  or  the  single  feeling  has  prevented  these 
further  questions  from  being  raised.  The  admission  that 
tremors  group  themselves  in  the  sense  of  combining  to  pro- 


'  The  qnestion  of  its  identity  -with      an  important  place  in  his  system,  will 
the  'PsychopUsm,'  which  holds  sach      be  considered  later. 


BIR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  463 

dace  a  single  feeling,  is  taken  to  carry  with  it  the  admission 
that  feelings  group  themselves  likewise.  In  truth  it  does 
nothing  of  the  kind.  The  coalition  of  the  several  groups  of 
neural  tremors,  which  have  produced  feelings  a,  h,  and  c,  may 
produce  another  feeling,  d,  but  this  does  not  imply  that  feeling 
d  is  a  group  formed  of  feelings  a,  &,  and  e.  The  supposition 
that  feelings  group  themselves  is  at  best  only  related  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  grouping  of  neural  tremors  as  an  inference 
from  it  by  analogy ;  and  if  the  analogy  is  to  hold  good,  the 
result  of  the  grouping  of  feelings  will  be  anything  but  such  a 
consciousness  as  Mr.  Lewes  describes.  It  will  be  a  further  dis- 
tinct feeling,  supervening  upon  the  feelings  of  which  it  is  the 
combined  effect,  not  that  consciousness  of  relation  between 
them  which  implies  their  equal  presence  to  it.  Many  neural 
tremors,  no  doubt,  combine  to  produce  one  sensible  effect, 
but  they  do  not  survive  as  distinct  tremors  in  the  effect. 
The  feding  which  they  produce  is  not  composed  of  them. 
They  are  many ;  it  is  one.  The  one  is  not  also  the  many. 
It  is  not  manifold  in  itself,  but  only  so  in  virtue  of  the  mul* 
tiplicity  of  the  tremors  producing  it.  They  are  not  one  in 
themselves,  but  only  so  in  virtue  of  the  singleness  of  the 
feeling  which  is  their  result.  If  single  feelings,  then,  are  to 
be  supposed  to  group  themselves  analogously  to  that  group- 
ing of  neural  tremors  which  yields  a  single  feeling,  the 
meaning  must  be  that  they  jointly  produce  some  single  feel- 
ing other  than  themselves  and  one  in  which  they  do  not,  in 
their  distinctness,  survive — a  feeling  which  is  manifold  not 
in  itself,  but  in  virtue  of  the  multiplicity  of  its  conditions, 
while  the  feelings  producing  it,  on  the  other  hand,  will  have 
no  unity  except  as  producing  such  a  single  effect.  Whatever 
such  a  feeling  might  be,  it  clearly  could  not  be  that  ^  feeling 
of  the  relations  between  feelings' — that  consciousness  of 
change  from  one  feeling  to  another — which  Mr.  Lewes  de- 
scribes. To  such  consciousness  the  survival  of  the  feelings  in 
their  distinctness  is  as  necessary  as  the  unifying  principle 
which  correlates  them.  It  is  not  a  further  feeling,  produced 
by  or  super^ning  upon  a  combination  of  other  feelings,  any 
more  than  it  is  those  feelings  by  themselves.  It  is  a  con- 
sciousness for  which  they  remain  as  manifold,  yet  as  one  in 
virtue  of  the  subject,  present  to  them  throughout,  for  which 
they  form  a  relation. 

76.  We  find,  then,  that  the '  physiological  condition '  of  the  Nor  (S) 


454 


MR.  LEWESP  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 


from  'the 
pzooessof 
ohan^  in 
the  rela- 
tionfi '  of 
theoorre- 
■ponding 
feeliDgs: 


Unless  the 


' Logic  of  Feeling'— of  feeling  as  the  conBcionsness  of  rela- 
tion between  feelings — ^is  one  which  in  no  way  helps  to 
account  for  its  ostensible  result,  or  appears  to  do  so  only  by 
being  tacitly  converted  into  it.  We  come  next  to  its  *  psycho- 
logical condition/  described  as  a  *  process  of  change  in  the 
relations/  The  precise  import  of  this  expression  is  not 
made  so  clear  aer  with  such  a  writer  as  Mr.  Lewes  we  should 
expect  it  to  be.  He  speaks  of  the  relations,  but  there  is  no- 
thing to  show  decisively  what  he  means  us  to  understand  bj 
them.  Are  they  relations  between  neural  tremors  or  between 
groups  of  these,  or  on  the  other  hand  relations  between  the 
several  feelings  which  these  groups  are  supposed  to  consti- 
tute P  As  it  would  seem  that  a  co-ordination  as  well  as  a 
distinction  between  the  physiological  and  psychological  con- 
ditions is  meant  to  be  conveyed,  we  naturally  understand  the 
latter  to  consist  in  those  successive  differences  of  feeling 
which,  in  Mr.  Lewes*  language,  are  the  '  other  side  or  aspect ' 
of  the  ^  physiological  condition,'  formed  by  successive  combi- 
nations of  tremors.  To  have  written  'successive  differences 
of  feeling,'  however,  in  this  context  would  have  seriously 
interfered  with  the  plausibility  of  the  passage.  What  sense, 
the  reader  would  ask,  can  there  be  in  saying  that '  successive 
differences  of  feeling'  are  the  condition,  psychological  or 
other,  of  feeling  ?  The  answer  of  course  would  be  that,  accord- 
ing to  the  general  tenor  of  the  passage,  the  '  feeling,'  which 
is  said  to  be  thus  conditioned,  is  the  consciousness  of  reh^ 
tions  between  feelings  as  distinct  from  the  several  successive 
feelings  which  are  said  to  condition  it.  This  being  so,  the 
use  of  the  phrase  '  successive  differences  of  feeling,'  instead 
of  *  process  of  change  in  the  relations,'  at  the  cost  of  plausi- 
bility might  have  promoted  clearness,  for  it  would  have 
brought  to  the  front  the  sense  in  which  '  feeling '  must  be 
understood  throughout  the  account  here  given  of  its  condi- 
tions. It  might  thus  have  prevented  the  equivocation  of 
which  advantage  is  virtually  taken  in  the  statement  that  the 
process  of  netiral  grouping  is  the  physiological  condition  of 
feeling,  where  according  to  the  context  *  feeling '  must  mean 
the  consciousness  of  relation  between  feelings,  whereas  in 
truth,  as  we  have  seen,  it  is  not  this,  but  only  successive 
differences  of  feeling,  that  the  '  neural  process '  can  properly 
be  said  to  condition. 

77.  If  then  the  statement  that '  the  process  of  change  in  the 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  455 

relations  is  the  psychological  condition  of  feeling '  is  to  be  nn-  piooeas  is 
derstood  as  meaning  that  the  successive  diflTerences  of  feeling  jJ^J/or 
are  the  condition  of  the  consciousness  of  relation  between  feel-  a  conscious 
ings,  it  is  one  with  which  we  have  already  dealt  in  the  pre-  *^*^- 
ceding  paragraphs.  The  *  condition '  in  this  case  can  be  so  at 
any  rate  only  in  a  peculiar  sense.  It  is  neither  a  constituent 
of  that  which  it  is  said  to  condition,  nor  an  event  antecedent 
to  it^  nor  a  related  object  which  determines  it.  The  conscious* 
ness  of  succession  or  difference  as  a  relation  between  certain 
feelings  is  not  one  made  up  either  wholly  or  in  part  of  those 
feelings.  It  must  exclude  from  itself  their  diversity  and 
succession  in  order  to  be  the  consciousness  of  it.  It  does  not 
supervene  upon  their  disappearance,  but  must  be  equally 
present  to  each  of  them  in  order  to  their  correlation.  It  is 
not  determined  by  them,  but  is  the  condition  of  the  determi- 
nation which  they  have  for  it.  The  account  of  the  psycho- 
logical condition  of  feeling,  then,  being  inadmissible  as  thus 
understood,  can  it  be  taken  in  any  different  sense  9  Only,  it 
would  seem,  if  by  *the  process  of  change  in  the  relations* 
we  understand,  not  a  manifold  of  successive  events  in  the  way 
of  feeling,  but  the  process  which  these  events  constitute  for 
a  unifying  consciousness.  This  is  probably  the  meaning 
which  both  Mr.  Lewes  and  most  of  his  readers  really  attach 
to  the  expression.  If  the  question  were  fairly  asked  whether 
the  sequence  of  feeling  b  upon  feeling  a,  of  feeling  c  upon  &, 
and  so  on,  sufficed  to  account  for  the  ^  Logic  of  Feeling,'  as 
equivalent  to  the  consciousness  of  relation  between  feelings, 
it  would  most  likely  be  answered  in  the  negative.  What  is 
really  supposed  to  account  for  it  is  the  succession  of  feelings, 
interpreted  by  the  subject  of  it  as  a  process  of  change.  Such 
interpretation,  however,  presupposes  just  that  consciousness 
of  relation  between  feelings,  through  consciousness  of  a 
self  equally  present  to  them  all,  which  is  being  ostensibly 
accounted  for.  The  ^  psychological  condition '  has  indeed 
become  adequate  to  explain  that  which  is  said  to  be  its 
necessary  consequence,  but  only  by  being  taken  in  a  sense  in 
which  it  presupposes  or  is  identical  with  it. 

78.  The  case,  then,  as  we  have  so  far  examined  it,  stands  Thus  only 
thus.    It  is  through  the  propositions  that  *  the  real  is  what  ^J^^f '^^^^ 
is  given  in  feeling,'  that  ^experience  is  the  registration  of  'feeling' 
feeling,'  that  its  sole  *  content  is  feeling,'  combined  with  the  ^^*^®  «*: 

X    rp     1-  P£xi.  penenceof 

account  of  feeling  as  a  necessary  consequence  of '  the  process  force  b» 


466  MR  LEWESP  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

eitpiained  of  neural  grouping,'  that  Mr.  Lewes  arrives  at  his  physical 
of  fiaoe^*  psychogeny,  and  through  it  deduces  *  our  cosmos,'  *  the  ob- 
jective world  which  arises  in  experience,'  from  an  ^object 
which  is  not  the  other  side  of  the  subject,  but  the  larger 
circle  which  includes  it.'  ^  In  so  doing  he  comes,  though  by 
a  less  rough  and  ready  way,  to  the  same  conclusion  as  Mr. 
Spencer,  who  finds  the  ^  objectivity '  of  the  objective  world 
in  its  dependence  on  some  matter  or  force,  or  some  unknown 
source  of  matter  and  force,  to  which  our  consciousness 
testifies  as  an  effect  to  its  cause.  Like  Mr.  Spencer,  he 
in  effect  answers  a£Srmatively  the  question  which  we  have 
put  in  the  form — '  Can  the  experience  of  force  be  explained 
as  a  result  of  force  P ' '  This  question,  as  we  have  seen,  forms 
the  true  test  of  what  is  popularly  known  as  the  derivation  of 
mind  from  matter,  whether  this  takes  the  form,  as  with  Mr. 
Spencer,  of  a  derivation  of  *  objective '  experiences,  on  which 
the  *  subjective '  in  some  way  depend,  from  a  *  non-ego  *  in- 
dependent of  thought  and  manifesting  itself  as  force  or 
matter,  or,  as  with  Mr.  Lewes  himself,  the  form  of  an  inclu- 
sion within  an  *  object,'  not  relative  to  thought,  of  that 
world  ^  objective '  in  another  sense,  which  he  admits  to  be  a 
^  differentiation  of  existence  due  to  feeling  and  thought.'  He 
answers  the  question  affirmatively,  but  when  we  examine  the 
propositions  on  which  his  answer  rests,  we  find  that,  while 
each  is  in  a  sense  true  enough  in  itself,  they  are  not  true  in 
such  a  sense  as  will  allow  of  their  combination  in  the  con- 
clusion drawn  from  them.  In  that  sense  in  which  it  is  true 
that  all  the  content  of  experience  is  feeling,  and  that  the  real 
is  what  is  given  in  feeling,  it  is  not  true  that  feeling  is  a 
necessary  consequence  of  a  process  of  neural  grouping.  The 
^  feeling,'  which  can  be  properly  said  to  be  a  necessary  con- 
sequence of  such  a  process,  means  the  successive  occurrence 
of  feelings.  On  the  other  hand,  the  content  of  experience  is 
only  reducible  to  'feeling,'  if  *  feeling'  is  taken  to  mean  a 
continuous  consciousness  of  facts,  of  which  each  consists  in 
a  feeling  having  occurred,  or  in  the  possibility  of  its  occur- 
ring, under  certain  conditions,  llie  real  again  is  only  given 
in  feeling,  so  far  as  this  is  equivalent  to  the  perception 
of  relation  between  feelings,  and  between  the  conditions 
under  which  they  occur.  But  such  connected  consciousness 
of  fact^  such  perception  of  relation,  is  just  what  the  succes- 

>  Above,  §  69.  *  Ibid,  §§  58-62. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  467 

sive  occurrence  of  feelings  is  not,  nor  bj  itself  can  come 
to  be. 

79.  The  preceding  paragraphs  have  not  been  written  with*  Can  it  be 
ont  a  fall  sense  that  to  most  readers  they  will  convey  the  ^^*^^^ 
impression  of  an  attempt  to  dispose  of  Mr.  Lewes'  philosophy  ^pe^eho- 
by  a  short  method,  which  in  fact  only  shows  the  writer's  igno-  ^^^^^ , 
ranee  of  the  functions  now  'discovered*  to  belong  to  the  or'peycho- 
psychoplasm  or  psychological  medium.  But  for  this  igno-  plasni'? 
ranee,  it  will  be  thought,  it  would  not  be  so  roundly  asserted, 

either  that  it  is  only  a  successive  occurrence  of  feelings,  in 
distinction  from  a  consciousness  of  their  relation,  which  can 
properly  be  treated  as  an  effect  of  the  process  of  neural 
grouping,  or  that  the  successive  occurrence  of  the  feelings 
cannot  of  itself  become  such  a  consciousness*  Seasons,  how* 
ever,  have  been  already  given  for  this  assertion.  Let  us  see 
then  whether  there  is  anything  in  the  doctrine  of  the  'psycho- 
logical medium,'  as  stated  by  Mr.  Lewes,  to  detract  from 
their  cogency.  Can  this  'medium,'  as  imderstood  in  any 
sense  compatible  with  its  physical  derivation,  or  with  its 
being  directly  or  indirectly  a  result  of  force,  either  itself 
amount  to  an  experience  of  force,  or  account  for  the  trans- 
formation of  the  successive  occurrence  of  feelings,  produced 
by  nervous  excitation,  into  such  an  experience  P 

80.  To  prevent  misapprehension,  we  shall,   before  pro-  Mr.  Lewes 
ceeding,  quote  the  passages  which  best  convey  Mr.  Lewes'  f'^^  ^^ 
conception  of  the '  medium ' : — '  If  instead  of  considering  the  puL* 
whole  vital  organism,  we  consider  solely  its  sensitive  aspects 

and  confine  ourselves  to  the  nervous  system,  we  may  repre- 
sent the  molecular  movements  of  the  Bioplasm  by  the  neural 
tremors  of  the  Psychoplasm ;  these  tremors  are  what  I  term 
newral  vmiUy  the  raw  material  of  consciousness  ;  the  several 
neural  groups  formed  by  these  units  represent  the  organised 
elements  of  tissues,  the  tissues,  and  the  combinations  of 
tissues  into  organs,  and  of  organs  into  apparatus.  The 
movements  of  the  Bioplasm  constitute  vitality ;  the  move- 
ments of  the  Psychoplasm  constitute  sensibility.  The  forces 
of  the  cosmical  medium  which  are  transformed  in  the  physio- 
logical medium  build  up  the  organic  structure,  which  in  the 
various  jitages  of  its  evolution  reacts  according  to  its  statical 
conditions,  themselves  the  result  of  previous  reactions.  It 
is  the  same  with  what  may  be  called  the  mental  organism. 
Here  also  every  phenomenon  is  the  product  of  two  factors. 


468  AOL  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

external  and  internal^  impersonal  and  personal,  objectiye  and 
sabjectiye.  Viewing  the  internal  factor  solely  in  the  light 
of  feeling,  we  may  say  that  the  sentient  materUdy  ont  of  which 
all  the  forms  of  conscionsness  are  evolved,  is  the  Psycho- 
plasm  incessantly  fluctuating,  incessantly  renewed.  Viewing^ 
this  on  the  physiological  side,  it  is  the  succession  of  neural 
tremors,  variously  combining  into  neural  groups* 

^  An  organism  lives  only  in  relation  to  its  medium.  What 
growth  is,  in  the  physical  sense,  that  is  experience  in  the 
psychical  sense,  viz.  argamc  registration  of  assimiUUed  mate^ 
rial.  The  direct  relation  of  the  organism  is  to  the  internal 
medium,  the  indirect  relation  is  to  the  cosmical  medium. 
.  .  .  We  have  already  spoken  metaphorically  of  the  Psycho- 
plasm,  or  sentient  material  forming  the  psychological  medium 
from  which  the  soul  derives  its  structure  and  powers.  It  is 
the  mass  of  potential  feeling  derived  from  all  the  sensitive 
affections  of  the  organism,  not  only  of  the  individual,  but, 
through  heredity,  of  the  ancestral  organisms.  All  sensations, 
perceptions,  emotions,  volitions,  are  partly  connate,  partly 
acquired;  partly  the  evolved  products  of  the  accumulated 
experiences  of  ancestors,  and  partly  of  the  accumulated  ex- 
periences of  the  individual,  when  each  of  these  have  left 
residua  in  the  modifications  of  the  structure.  •  •  •  We  only 
know  what  is  sufBciently  like  former  experiences  to  become,  so 
to  speak,  incorporated  with  them,  assimilated  by  them.  .  .  • 
Were  it  not  for  this  controlling  effect  of  the  established  path- 
ways, every  excitation  would  be  indefinitely  irradiated  through- 
out the  whole  organism ;  but  a  pathway  once  established  is 
the  ready  issue  for  any  new  excitation.  The  evolution  of 
mind  is  the  establishment  of  definite  paths ;  this  is  the  mental 
organisation  fitting  it  for  the  reception  of  definite  impres- 
sions, and  their  co-ordination  with  past  feelings.  .  •  • 
Through  their  registered  modifications,  feelings  once  pro- 
duced are  capable  of  reproduction,  and  must  always  be  re- 
produced, whenever  the  new  excitation  is  discharged  along 
the  old  channels.  .  .  .  Each  excitation  has  to  be  assimilated 
— ^taken  up  into  the  psychological  medium  and  transformed 
into  a  sensation  or  perception:  a  process  that  will  depend  on 
the  psychostatical  conditions  at  the  time  being.  •  .  •  We 
have  seen  how  between  the  cosmos  and  consciousness  there 
is  interposed  a  psychological  medium,  briefly  designated  by 
the  term  experience.' ' 

I  PfoUefM  qf  Life  and  Mind,  yol.  i.  pp.  118-123. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  4»> 

81.  There  are  many  difficulties  arising  ont  of  the  above  IflUie*^- 
passages,  the  consideration  of  which  we  shall  for  the  present  ^^^^ 
postpone.  We  shall  not  qaestion  fche  possibility  of  an  ^  inter-  ezpUiiu 
position  between  the  cosmos  and  consciousness '  of  a  medium  ^f  ^^^ 
which,  according  to  the  account  given  of  it,  is  itself  conscious-  moif 
ness,  and  not  only  so,  but  a  consciousness  in  which  (as  we 
learn  elsewhere)  '  the  cosmos  arises.'  Nor  shall  we  examine 
the  significance,  in  a  theory  which  leaves  nothing  to  be  the 
subject  but  the  succession  of  feeling  itself,  of  language 
which  describes  the  phenomena  of  the  mental  organism  as 
the  product  of  *  subjective  and  objective  factors,'  or  feeling 
as  the  subjective  side  of  that  which  objectively  is  neural 
process.  Our  present  business  is  to  ascertain  the  nature  of 
the  experience  which,  in  the  words  quoted,  Mr.  Lewes  ^  psy- 
chogenetically '  explains  for  us.  On  the  one  hand,  we  find 
experience  distinctly  identified  with  the  'psychological  me-» 
dium '  as '  interposed  between  the  cosmos  and  consciousness ; ' 
on  the  other  hand,  we  leam  that  this  medium, '  viewed  in  the 
light  of  feeling,'  is  '  the  sentient  material,  incessantly  fiuc* 
tuating,  incessantiy  renewed,  out  of  which  all  the  forms  of 
consciousness  are  evolved,'  or  '  firom  which  the  soul  derives 
its  structure  and  powers; '  that  it  is  the  'mass  of  potential 
feeling  derived  from  all  the  sensitive  affections  of  the  organ- 
ism, not  only  of  the  individual,  but,  through  heredity,  of  the 
ancestral  organisms,'  and  that  this  again,  *  viewed  on  the 
physiological  side,'  is  the  'succession  of  neural  tremors, 
variously  combining  into  neural  groups.' 

Now  is  the  experience,  which  this  psychogenetic  theory 
explains,  really  experience  in  that  sense  in  which  alone  it  can 
properly  be  said  co  be  interposed  between  the  cosmos  and 
consciousness,  as  that  in  and  through  which  there  comes  for 
consciousness  to  be  a  cosmos  P  Is  it  experience  in  that  sense 
in  which  experience  is  said  to  constitute  knowledge — that 
knowledge  of  which  the  development,  according  to  Mr. 
Lewes,  is  the  same  thing  as  the  development  of  the  '  known 
cosmos '  P  ^  Is  it  the  experience,  as  to  which  Eant  asked 
what  were  the  conditions  of  its  possibility,  or  does  the  '  psy- 
chogenetic '  theory,  when  it  professes  to  answer  Kant's  ques- 
tion by  a  truer  method,  really  leave  it  untouched  P  Is  it,  in 
short,  experience  as  a  system  of  knowable  relations — is  it 
experience  of  a  world  and  nature — at  all  P  or  does  it  differ 
from  this  with  a  difference  as  complete  as  that  which  ha« 

» ii.  c.  4,  f  70. 


460 


MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 


*Experi- 
eDce '  maj 
mean  se- 
quence of 
impres- 
sions or 
connected 
conscious- 
ness of 
facts,  but 
not  both. 


already  been  pointed  oat  between  a  succession  of  feelings  and 
a  feeling  of  succession  P 

82.  In  regard  to  *  experience/  as  in  regard  to  *  feeling,*  it 
is  perhaps  needless  to  disclaim  any  pretension  to  prescribe 
an  absolute  right  or  wrong  in  the  usage  of  the  terms.  All 
that  is  asked  for  is  a  clear  recognition  of  the  difiPerence  be- 
tween experience  as  a  sequence  of  impressions,  each  qualified 
by  residua  of  those  which  have  preceded  it,  and  experience 
as  the  connected  consciousness  of  one  world  of  facts.  It  is 
for  lack  of  it  that  the  controversy  between  *  experientialists ' 
and  their  opponents  has  described  so  tedious  a  circle,  en- 
tanglement in  which  is  the  sure  mark  of  a  philosopher  who 
does  not  understand  his  business.  Eren  in  Kant  himself, 
though  the  establishment  of  the  distinction  is  perhaps  the 
most  permanent  intellectual  conquest  which  he  achieved, 
there  remain  ambiguities  which  might  have  been  cleared 
away  if  it  had  been  the  beginning  instead  of  the  end  of  his 
inquiry.  He  can  scarcely  be  said  himself  to  make  clear  the 
distinction  between  '  empirische  Begriffe,'  which  the  Cate- 
gories emphatically  are  not,  and  the  ^  Erfahrungs-Begriffe,' 
which  as  emphatically  they  are.  In  his  denial  of  the  ^  em- 
pirical' origin  of  mathematical  truths,  he  uses  language 
which  is  naturally  understood  to  imply  more  than  a  denial 
of  their  origin  in  the  sequence  of  impressions,  and  to  mean 
that  they  are  not  given  in  experience  in  that  other  sense  in 
which,  according  to  him,  the  Categories  are  conditions  of  its 
possibility.  There  is  thus  some  excuse  for  that  equivocation 
in  regard  to  the  meaning  of  experience  which  the  accepted 
refutations  of  him  involve.  These  refutations  generally  take 
one  of  two  forms.  On  the  one  hand,  it  is  maintained  that 
the  primary  truths  of  mathematics  are  abstractions  from 
relations  given  in  and  with  the  simplest  experience  of  facts ; 
on  the  other,  that  the  effects  of  repeated  impressions  may  be 
80  accumulated  through  hereditary  transmission  as  to  render 
certain  associations  of  ideas  at  once  connate  and  indissoluble 
to  the  individual.  Both  propositions  may  be  true  and  valuar 
ble,  but,  as  against  Kant's  essential  doctrine,  neither  is  to 
the  purpose,  and  it  is  only  the  ambiguity  in  regard  to  expe- 
rience ihat  prevents  this  from  being  seen.  When  the  ques- 
tion relates  to  the  derivability  of  mathematical  truths  from 
the  sequence  of  impressions,  it  is  not  to  the  purpose  to  show 
that  they  are  abstracted  from  an  experience  of  facts,  for  the 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  461 

qtiefition  as  to  the  relation  of  this  experience  to  the  sequence 
of  impressions  still  remains  to  be  answered,  and  is  bat  a 
larger  form  of  the  question  originally  asked.  As  little  is  it 
to  the  purpose,  when  the  problem  is  to  ascertain  the  ultimate 
conditions  of  there  being  for  consciousness  an  objective  world, 
to  be  told  of  a  process  by  which  one  feeling  comes  to  excite 
the  residuum  of  another  instinctively  and  uniformly.  It 
only  seems  to  be  to  the  purpose,  because  we  take  the  asso* 
dated  feelings  to  be  what  they  only  come  to  be  through 
relation  to  that  consciousness  of  a  world  which  we  profess  to 
account  for  by  them. 

83.  Bearing  in  mind,  then,  this  ambiguity  in  regard  to  Thepy- 
experience,  let  us  be  on  our  guard  against  being  entangled  chopfasm, 
in  a  further  ambiguity  when  we  speak  of  a  psychological  tremora' 
medium.     One  proper  and  definite  sense  in  which  we  may  ^^ 

use  this  phrase  is  to  express  the  conditions  or  ^  material '  n^ezperi- 
through  which  certain  forces  come  into  such  relation  to  a  «?9® '" 
sentient  organism  as  to  constitute  an  actual  feeling.  These  geiuM. 
conditions  are,  in  Mr.  Lewes'  language,  the  medium  to  which 
the  organism  is  directiy  related,  as  distinct  from  the '  Cosmical 
medium '  to  which  its  relation  is  indirect.  '  The  forces  of 
the  cosmical  medium  which  are  transformed  in  the  physio- 
logical medium  build  up  the  organic  structure,  which  in  the 
various  stages  of  its  evolution  reacts  according  to  its  statical 
conditions,  themselves  the  result  of  previous  reactions.'  This 
'  physiological '  medium  is  also  '  psychological '  in  so  far  as 
that  reaction  of  the  organism,  which  it  conditions,  consti- 
tutes feeling.  It  consists  in  the '  succession  of  neural  tremors, 
variously  combining  into  neural  groups,'  and,  according  to 
one  mode  of  expression,  forming  a  '  psychoplasm,  incessantly 
fluctuating,  incessantiy  renewed;'  according  to  another, 
*  leaving  residua  in  the  modification  of  the  structure,'  or 
'establishing  definite  paths'  in  it.  From  these,  again,  it 
results  that  excitations,  which,  as  proceeding  from  the  cosmi* 
cal  medium,  remain  the  same  that  they  have  been  before, 
in  relation  to  the  psychological  medium  come  to  produce 
dilierent  reactions ;  in  other  words,  that  new  feelings  gradually 
arise  upon  the  same  stimuli. 

84.  So  far  all  is  clear,  but  it  is  also  clear  that  the '  medium '  for  (i)  ft 
described  is  not  experience  in  either  of  the  senses  distin-  of^thJoon- 
guished  above.     It  is  not  the  sequence  of  impressions,  but  ditiooa  of 
part  of  the  series  of  conditions  through  which  the  sentient  ^ 


462  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIE14CE. 

se^Tifnoe  organism  comes  to  exercise  the  function  consisting  in  snch 
sfoM^""'  sequence  of  impressions — a  part  distinguished  from  another 
part,  called  the  cosmical  medium,  as  more  directly  related  to 
the  organism  or  its  function.  The  function  no  doubt  yaries 
as  the  medium  and  again  leaves  residua,  which  modify  the 
medium  and  through  it  the  subsequent  exercise  of  the  func- 
tion, but  to  identify  them  is  to  cancel  the  meaning  of  the 
language  which  we  use  in  calling  one  medium,  the  other 
function.  On  the  principle,  indeed,  that  any  phenomenon 
is  the  same  as,  or  *  another  aspect  of,'  the  sum  of  its  condi- 
tions, it  may  be  urged  that  the  sequence  of  impressions  is  in 
reality  identical  with  the  medium  which  conditions  it.  But 
'to  this  we  should  reply  that,  in  the  first  place,  when  we 
speak  of  what  the  sequence  of  impressions  really  is,  we  have 
no  right  to  restrict  ourselves  to  the  physical  conditions  on 
which  it  depends,  as  distinct  from  the  further  functions  to 
which  it  in  turn  is  relative  in  the  system  of  the  spiritual  (or, 
if  that  phrase  is  objected  to,  of  the  distinctively  human) 
life :  and,  secondly,  that  not  all  the  conditions  of  the  se- 
quence of  impressions  are  included  in  the  psychological 
medium,  as  described  by  Mr.  Lewes,  but  only  such  as  remain 
.  after  ezclasion  of  those  belonging  to  the  organism  on  the 
one  side,  and  the  *  cosmical  medium'  on  the  other.  He 
would  tell  us,  no  doubt,  that  there  is  no  real  separation  of 
organism  from  medium,  or  of  one  medium  from  the  other,  but 
he  none  the  less  represents  the  relation  of  the  psychological 
medium  to  the  organism  aud  to  the  cosmos  as  one  of  inter- 
position, and  it  is  difBcult  to  see  what  significance  the  phrase 
in  question  would  retain  if  that  representation  were  given 
up. 
And  (2)  85.  So  much  for  the  identification  of  experience,  under- 

^'Jr^m in  ^^  *^  *^®  mere  sequence  of  impressions,  with  the  psycho- 
vhich*the  logical  medium.     Taking  it  next  according  to  the  other 
®®f°^^.^ .    meaninsr,  as  the  connected  consciousness  of  one  world  of 
quite  other  facts,  or  as  Hhe  cosmos  which  arises  m  consciousness,'  we 
than  nea-    readily  admit  that  there  is  a  true  and  important  sense  in 
^^J^      which  this  may  be  called  a  ^  psychological  medium,'  but  not 
as  the  medium  of  Mr.  Lewes'  psychogenesis.    The  medium 
which  he  describes  is  one  through  which  'forces  of  the 
cosmic  medium'  issue  in  the  occurrence  of  feeling.    The 
medium  which  experience  constitutes  is  one  in  which  occur- 
rences of  feeling  are  transformed  into  the  relations  of  objects. 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  4eS 

It  is  that  by  relation  to  which  alone  any  feeling  as  it  occurs 
becomes  an  intelligible  fact,  and  apart  from  which  it  would 
be  as  insignificant  as  a  letter  not  woven  into  the  spelling  of 
a  word.  We  may  not  confuse  the  *  medium 'through  which, 
given  a  transient  feeling,  there  arises  for  intelligence  a 
permanent  fact — through  which  upon  successive  states  of 
consciousness  there  supervenes  a  consciousness  of  that  rela- 
tion of  succession  which  cannot  be  itself  successive — ^with  a 
medium  which  merely  determines  what  at  any  moment  the 
feeling — ^the  transient,  the  successive — ^shall  be.  If  Amotion 
is  relative  to  medium,  so  is  medium  to  function.  As  the 
function  consisting  in  the  occurrence  of  feeling  is  wholly 
different  fro|^  that  consisting  in  the  perception  of  fact  or* 
relation — as  just  what  must  be  asserted  of  the  feeling  as  it 
occurs,  viz.  that  it  is  successive,  must  be  denied  of  the  fact 
or  relation  and  of  the  consciousness  for  which  such  fact  or 
relation  exists — bo  the '  medium '  which  conditions  the  latter 
function,  though  it  may  necessarily  presuppose,  must  be 
wliolly  different  from,  that  which  conditions  the  former.  If 
Mr.  Lewes  had  adequately  distinguished  the  functions,  he 
would  have  been  less  ready  to  identify  the  medium  formed 
by  that  experience  which  is  equivalent  to  the  world  as  so  far  • 
known  with  the  medium  which  ^  physiologically '  is  neural 
process. 

86.  We  may  be  here  met  with  the  rejoinder  that  this  dis-  This  am- 
tinction  of  functions  is  just  the  point  at  issue,  which  we  ^^  ^f 
agreed  not  to  take  as  finally  settled  till  the  doctrine  of  the  *  psycho- 
psychological  medium  had  been  examined.    We  undertook  J*]^™*" 
to  examine  it  in  order  to  see  whether  it  warranted  the  accommo- 
identification  of  the  succession  of  feelings  with  the  conscious-  ^*^^  ^  * 
ness  of  relations,  and,  through  this,  the  physical  derivation  ceivedriew 
of  the  consciousness  of  force ;  and  now,  it  might  seem,  we  o^^^P®"- 
are  assuming  an  antithesis  between  such  succession  and 
such  consciousness  in  order  to  discredit  the  account  given  of 
the  medium  as  a  theory  of  experience.    But  in  truth,  the 
more  we  look  into  the  matter,  the  more  clear  does  it  become 
that  it  is  not  an  independent  theory  of  neural  process,  based 
on  physiological  research,  which  has  led  Mr.  Lewes  to  regard 
this  as  a  psychological  medium  in  both  the  senses  we  have 
distinguished,  and  thus  to  identify  the  sequence  of  feelings 
with  the  experience  of  a  world  on  the  strength  of  their  being 
alike  implied  in  the  neural  medium ;  but  that,  conversely. 


464  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPEmENCR. 

his  view  of  their  identity  has  determined  his  view  of  the 
medium.  It  is  thus  that  his  acoonnt  of  the  neural  process, 
as  a  medium  relative  to  the  succession  of  feelings,  becomes 
perplexed,  as  we  have  pointed  out,  by  confusion  of  the  medium 
with  the  function  which  it  conditions,  without  becoming  any 
the  more  tenable  as  an  account  of  the  experience  through 
which  'a  cosmos  arises  in  consciousness.'  The  neural 
medium  of  the  succession  of  feelings  comes  to  be  treated  as 
if  it  were  the  succession  itself,  in  order  that  it  may  do  duty 
as  that  medium  of  knowledge  which  the  succession  of  feel- 
ings is  wrongly  supposed  to  be.  So  long  as  the  medium  is 
neural  process,  determined  by  residua  which  the  process  has 
previously  left  in  the  shape  of  modifications  of  the  organic 
structure — so  long  as  the  *  Psychoplasm '  is  the  structure  so 
modified  and  determining  the  nature  of  the  feeling  which 
shall  ensue  upon  any  nervous  excitation — we  know  what  we 
are  about.  It  is  otherwise  when  feeling  itself  appears  as  the 
structure  in  which  modifications  are  registered,'  and  when 
the  medium  which  determines  what  particular  feeling  shall 
ensue  upon  a  given  excitation  is  described  as  itself  a  *  sen- 
tient material,'  or  'mass  of  potential  feeling.'  'Sentient 
material,'  it  is  true,  might  mean  only  the  material — the 
Aristotelian  CX.rf — of  sentience,  '  potential  feeling '  only  the 
possibility — ^the  Aristotelian  Svvafiis — of  feeling,  and  no  one 
would  dispute  that  the  neural  medium  was  such  a  material 
or  possibility,  requiring  only  the  presence  from  moment  to 
moment  of  certain  excitations  in  order  that  from  moment  to 
moment  the  actuality  of  certain  feelings  might  ensue.  But 
it  is  clear  from  the  context  that  something  other  than  this  is 
intended  to  be  conveyed  by  *  sentient  material '  and  *  poten- 
tial feeling '  in  the  passages  quoted  above.  '  Sentient 
material '  is  spoken  of  as  that  fr^m  which  all  the  forms  of 
consciousness  are  evolved,  and  this  would  be  unmeaning 
unless  it  were  regarded  as  itself  an  elementary  conscious- 
ness. Under  'the  mass  of  potential  feeling,'  again,  are 
included  by  implication  '  sensations,  perceptions,  emotions, 
volitions.'  *    We  have  previously  found  how  Mr.  Lewes,  by 

*  '  T^rovgh  their  registered  modifioa'  forms  of  oonacioiisneas  are  OTolved  is 

HanSf  feelings  once  produced  are  capable  the  Psychoplasm  inoessantly  fluctuating, 

of  reproduction/ — ^Mr.  Lewes,  loe.  oU.  incessantly  renewed/  ....   *  It  (the 

'  '  Viewing  the  internal  factor  solely  Psychoplasm)  is  the  mass  of  potential 

in  the  light  of  feeling,  we  may  say  that  feeling  derived  from  all  the  smsitive 

the  sentient  material  out.  of  which  all  affections  of  the  organism,  not  only  of 


MR.   LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  405 

help  of  the  phrase  'virtnal  feeling/  is  able  to  represent  the 
knowledge  that  a  feeling  will  occur  under  certain  conditions 
as  if  it  were  itself  a  feeling.  It  is  a  like  advantage  which 
is  here  taken  of  the  phrase  *  potential  feeling,'  If  it  really 
means  no  more  than  possibility  of  feeling,  to  Mr.  Lewes  and 
his  readers  it  carries  with  it  a  n/uance  of  meaning  widely 
different^  A  possibility  of  feeling,  in  the  sense  explained 
above,  is  seen  by  any  considerate  person  to  be  not  a  feeling 
at  all,  whereas  a  *  potential  feeling '  seems  to  be  a  feeling 
still.  As  applied  to  the  neural  medium  it  can  indeed  properly 
mean  nothing  but  those  modifications  of  organic  structure 
which  the  neural  process  is  incessantly  producing  and  by 
which  in  turn  it  is  being  incessantly  a^ected;  in  other 
words,  certain  conditions  of  feeling  which  are  not  feelings  at 
aU.  Bat  it  is  evident  that  by  Mr.  Lewes  himself  its  distinc- 
tion from  feeling  is  not  recognised,  and  hence  it  forms  the 
verbal  *  medium '  between  *  organic  registration  of  assimi- 
lated material,'  in  the  proper  physical  sense,  and  that  ficti-^ 
tious  registration  of  feeling  which  is  supposed  to  constitute 
experience  as  the  medium  between  the  cosmos  and  conscious- 
ness. ^The  mass  of  potential  feeling,'  which  can  really 
mean  nothing  but  the  accumulation  of  the  effects  of  nervous 
irritations  in  the  structure  organic  to  feeling,  is  interpreted 
as  if  it  were  somehow  an  accumulation  of  the  feelings  that 
have  occurred  through  innumerable  generations.  We  have 
only  then  to  convert  feeling  into  the  consciousness  of  rela- 
tions between  feelings,  or  of  the  fact  that  such  a  feeling 
occurs  under  such  conditions — a  process  which  Mr.  Lewes 
win  at  any  time  perform  without  winking — and  we  have 
that  accumulation  of  known  facts  which  is  experience.  The 
identification  of  the  medium  which,  ^  viewed  on  the  physio- 
logical side,  is  the  succession  of  neural  tremors,'  with  the 
medium  into  which  any  appearance  has  to  be  ^  taken  up  and 
assimilated,'  in  order  to  become  a  contribution  to  knowledge 
of  a  world,  has  been  plausibly  accomplished. 

87.  In  order  then  to  test  tiie  truth  of  Mr.  Lewes'  concep-  Two  dic- 
tion of  the  '  psychological  medium,'  as,  on  the  one  hand,  tinctsenses 
the  succession  of  neural  tremors,  and,  on  the  other,  that  muia^n 
experience  through  which  '  the  cosmos  arises  in  conscious-  pf  feel- 
ness,'  we  have  only  to  ask  ourselves  what  can  really  be  meant  "**"' 

the  indiyidnal,  but,  through  heredity,  are  partly  connate,  partly  aoqitired,' 

of  the  ancestral  organisms.    All  sensa-  &c.  &;c. — Loe.  cit, 
tions,  perceptions,  emotions,    volitions 

VOL.  I.  H  H 


466  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

by  an  accumulation  of  feelings.    Feelings  as  such,  or  in  and 
by  themselves,  can  as  little  be  accumulated  as  successive 
moments  of  time  can  coexist.    Their  accumulation  or  group- 
ing may  in  truth  bear  either  of  two  very  different  senses. 
It  may  mean  that  while  each  feeling,  as  such,  is  a  passing 
event,  the  effects  of  their  repeated  occurrence  remain  in  a 
progressive  modification,  continued  through  generations,  of 
the  structure  organic  to  feeling.     But  when  we  speak  of  an 
accumulation  of  feelings  we  may  have  in  view  the  quite 
different  fact  that  from  the  passing  event  of  sensation, 
through  distinction  from  and  relation  to  a  self-conscious 
subject,  there  results  for  such  a  subject  the  permanent  fact 
of  its  having  occurred,  which  becomes  further  determined  by 
relation  to  other  facts  thus  progressively  constituted ;  and 
that  there  thus  arises  the  oontinuous  system  of  phenomena 
— ^none  of  them  feelings,  but  each  the  rec(^nised  fact  that  a 
certain  feeling  occurs  under  certain  conditions.  This  system 
is  what  we  call  experience  or  the  world  of  experience.    Its 
continuity  depends  on  the  unity  of  the  self-conscious  subject 
which,  in  ihe  manner  explained,  has  been  constitutive  of  the 
connected  phenomena,  and  through  continuous  relation  to 
which  they  are  continuously  related  to  each  other. 
The  eon-         88.  These  two  processes  of  accumulation  have  no  real 
which^***   element  of  identity.     It  is  true  that  feelings,  qualified  in  a 
makes  rac-  particular  way  as  a  result  of  the  former  process  (a),  are  the 
feei/ngs      *  material '  transformed  into  the  facts  which  are  accumulated 
into  ex-      iu  the  latter  (6) ;  but  neither  the  agent  of  this  transforma- 
olnnorbe    ^^^  *^°^  accumulation,  nor  the  manner  of  it,  has  anything 
*  evolved'    really  in  common  with  the  sentient  organism  or  its  progres- 
frompro-    gj^^  modification.      The   sentient  organism  is  not  in  any 
modifica-     proper  sense  the  subject  of  the  feelings  to  which  it  is  organic. 
tioneofthe  j^  jg  ^^^  conscious  of  them  as  its  feelings.    If  the  expression 
orgam    .    ^^^  ^^  pardoned,  it  is  not  an  it  for  itself  at  all,  but  only  for 
us.     The  apparatus  of  nerve  and  tissue  has  no  unity  for 
itself,  but  only  for  us,  to  whom  it  presents  itself  as  one  in 
virtue  of  its  function.     Its  unity  means  merely  the  combined 
action  of  many  elements,  in  relation  to  one  irresoluble  effect, 
viz.  feeling.     The  conversion  of  successive  feelings  into  an 
experience,  on  the  other  hand,  implies  a  subject  consciously 
relating  them  to  itself,  and  at  once  rendering  them  a  mani- 
fold (which  in  themselves,  as  successively  vanishing,  they 
are  not;  and  unifying  this  manifold  by  means  of  that  rela- 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  467 

tion*  Sncli  a  subject  has  or  is  the  unity  wliicli,  under  the 
name  of  our  understandings  enables  us  to  find  communitj  of 
function  in  the  elements  of  the  sentient  organism,  and  which 
thus  renders  it»  derivatively,  one  for  us.  To  imagine  an 
*  evolution '  of  l^e  self-conscious  subject  from  the  gathered 
experience  of  the  sentient  organism — an  evolution  of  the 
unifying  agent  from  that  which  it  rendexs  one — ^is  the  last 
form  which  the  standing  iarspov  irporapop  of  empirical 
psychology  has  assumed. 

89.  The  gradual  modification  of  the    organism,  again.  They  have 
through  the  exercise  of  its  function — ^through  residual  effects  »<>^»"^K  ^n 
of  nervous  excitation  upon  the  structure— is  wholly  unlike  and  the ' 
the  growth  of  experience,  as  equivalent  to  a  development  of  ****®' 
the  cosmos  in  consciousness.    An  accumulation  of  effects  is  be  an 
no  doubt  implied  in  the  gradual  change  of  organism.    The  ?^J®J*^*^*^ 
accumulation,  however,  is  not  into  a  known  system  of  related  fonner. 
facts,  at  once  distinct  and  one  in  virtue  of  their  relation,  but 
into  the  possibility  of  a  specific  succession  of  feelings.    The 
several  events  in  the  way  of  irritation  and  assimilation, 
which  result  in  the  development  of  an  organism,  do  not  sur- 
vive in   their  severality  in  the  organism.    They  survive 
simply  as  this  result,  which  means  in  the  specific  character 
of  further  processes  of  irritation  and  assimilation  which  take 
their  place.    Now,  the  survival  of  a  phenomenon  or  observed 
fact  in  an  experience,  if  any  <  cosmos '  is  to  arise  out  of  the 
experience,  must  be  just  the  opposite  of  this — ^not  a  survival 
of  it  in  another  phenomenon  into  which  it  has  disappeared, 
but  a  survival  of  it  in  itself  alongside  of  other  phenomena, 
each  of  which  in  the  unity  of  consciousness  has  its  several 
existence,  as  qualifying  and  qualified  by  aJl  the  rest.    It  is 
idle  to  talk  of  the  one  process  as  ^  evolved '  from  the  other. 
To  do  so  is  to  use  the  charm  of  a  potent  word  to  hide  a 
confusion  of  thought.    ^  Evolution,'  it  is  to  be  presumed, 
always  implies  some  identity  as  well  as  differentiation,  some 
continuance  of  the  material  of  evolution  into  the  evolved 
product.    But  in  the  case  before  us  there  is  no  common 
element  between  the  development  through  repeated  sensa- 
tion of  the  structure  organic  to  sense  and  the  development 
of  consciousness  in  experience  of  facts ;  no  continuance  of 
the  former  process,  under  modifications,  into  the  latter. 
And  not  only  so,  the  evolved  product,  as  by  Mr.  Lewes  it  is 
supposed  to  be — {.e.  the  consciousness  in  which,  according  to 

hh2 


468  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE, 

his  admission,  through  experience  the  universe  arises — is  the 
condition  of  there  being  as  an  object  for  us  that  particular 
process  of  the  universe,  the  accumulation  of  successive 
neural  tremors  in  their  progressive  effect  upon  the  organism, 
out  of  which  it  is  supposed  to  be  evolved.  That  which  is 
evolved  must  be  presupposed  in  order  to  the  objective  reality 
of  the  material  or  process  out  of  which  it  is  evolved. 
R^am6  of  90.  In  seeking,  however,  to  shut  up  the  psychology  of 
t?^*^inUie  ^v<^'^*^o^  i^  ^^^^  paradoxical  conclusion,  we  are  perhaps 
physical  travelling  too  fast.  It  cannot  indeed  be  escaped  except 
deriTation  xi]^TL  the  vicw  that  '  objective  reality '  is  to  be  ascribed  to 
enee.  '  something  else  than  the  facts  of  experience  or  the  cosmos 
which  arises  in  consciousness ;  but  this  view,  as  we  know, 
has  a  chamber  to  itself  in  Mr.  Lewes*  philosophy  from  which 
it  has  not  yet  been  finally  dislodged.*  For  the  present,  it 
will  be  remembered,  we  are  only  dealing  with  the  question 
whether  the  experience  or  consciousness  of  force  can  be 
legitimately  treated  as  being,  through  physical  evolution,  an 
effect  of  force ;  not  with  the  question  whether,  conversely, 
the  existence  of  force  mnst  be  regarded  as  dependent  on  self- 
consciousness  or  thought ;  and  it  will  not  be  till  the  latter 
question  is  reached  that  the  meaning  of  objective  reality,  and 
the  relation  of  objective  existence  to  existence  for  us,  can  be 
f uUy  discussed.  We  are  ^  yet  concerned  only  with  the 
equivocation  to  which  the  physical  derivation  of  experience, 
under  the  name  of  psychological  medium,  owes  its  plausi- 
bility. In  Mr.  Lewes*  account  of  the  process  we  have  traced 
the  equivocation  under  two  forms.  It  appears  (1)  in  the 
assumption  that  the  gradual  modification  of  the  structure 
organic  to  feeling — which  may  properly  be  regarded  as  an 
evolution  of  new  possibilities  of  feeling — is  an  evolution  of 
the  ^  forms  of  consciousness '  which  constitute  experience. 
It  appears  (2)  in  the  identification,  under  cover  of  the  phrase 
''•  organic  registration  of  assimilated  material,'  of  processes 
so  absolutely  different  as,  on  the  one  hand,  that  survival  in 
the  sentient  organism  of  the  effects  of  past  feelings  which 
modifies  the  character  of  the  feelings  that  succeed  them, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  incorporation  into  a  system  of 
known  facts  of  a  fact  newly  recognised  as  determining  and 
determined  by  them ;  or,  to  vary  the  expression,  in  the  con- 
fusion between  the  assimilation  of  a  nervous  excitation  under 

«  Above,  §  69. 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE.  469 

conditions  which  determine  the  character  of  the  correspond- 
ing feeling  and  the  transformation  of  feeling  into  a  percept 
tion  of  fact.  Thus,  having  applied  ourselves  to  the  account 
of  the  *  psychological  medium/  in  order  to  see  whether  the 
transition  from  a  succession  ,of  feelings,  of  which  each  is 
modified  by  its  predecessors,  to  an  experience  of  an  objective 
world,  can  explain  itself — whether  the  factor,  necessary  to 
the  transition  and  commonly  called  the  mind,  can  be  ac* 
counted  for  as  a  result  of  the  succession — we  fiiid  that  in 
this  account  the  difference  between  such  succession  and  such 
experience  is  simply  ignored,  or  hidden  by  an  apparatus  of 
ambiguous  terms.  An  evolution  of  *  mind '  is  indeed  ex- 
plained to  us ;  an  evolution  of  it  by  the  *  establishment  of 
definite  pathways,'  which  determine  the  radiation  of  nervous 
excitements ;  but  it  turns  out  not  to  be  an  evolution  of  mind 
in  that  sense  in  which  we  were  in  doubt  whether  it  could 
properly  be  said  to  be  physically  evolved.  It  is  an  evolution 
of  it,  not  as  the  subject  for  which  past  feelings  are  present 
facts,  and  facts  an  intelligibly  related  whole,  but  as  organic 
to  a  specific  sequence  of  feelings.  In  like  manner,  under 
the  title  ^  law  of  signature,'  an  account  of  the  *  objective 
localisation '  of  feelings — of  a  process  by  which  each  *  ac-» 
quires  its  place  in  the  cosmos  '-«is  ostensibly  offered  us,  but 
it  turns  out  to  be  merely  an  explanation  of  the  variation  in 
the  sequence  of  feeling,  through  variation  in  the  grouping  of 
neural  units.  We  want  to  know  how  the  sequence  of  feel- 
ings, in  the  absence  of  any  agent  not  generated  or  evolved 
from  it,  C£|;n  yield  anything  so  antithetic  to  itself  as  a  con- 
sciousness of  a  cosmos  in  which  sequent  feelings  have  become 
*  objectively  localised '  facts ;  and  by  way  of  satisfaction  we 
are  told  what  amounts  simply  to  this,  that  the  change  from 
one  feeling  to  another  is  as  the  change  in  the  groups  of 
neural  xmits  to  which  they  generally  correspond.  The  phy- 
siological fact  is  no  doubt  interesting  and  important,  but 
only  an  ignorantia  elenchi  can  account  for  the  tender  of  an 
explanation  so  little  to  the  purpose. 

91,  So  far,  then,  the  account  of  the  psychological  medium  Tranoition 
leaves  us  as  we  were.    To  the  question,  how  from  the  known  ^^^ 
processes  of  the  physical  world  can  be  derived  the  conscious-  mediuio,' 
Bess  or  experience  or  knowledge  of  those  processes,  it  affords 
no  answer.    But  here  we  may  be  properly  reminded  that 
Mr.  Lewes  recognisea  '  another  kind  of  psychoplasm '  than 


470  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  EXPERIENCE. 

that  which  we  have  hitherto  been  considering — ^the  *  medium' 
which  he  calls  ^  social.'  Onr  criticism,  indeed,  of  the  fnnc^ 
tions  ascribed  to  the  psychoplasm  has  not  been  vitiated  by 
onr  postponing  the  consideration  of  it  in  this  other  form,  for 
it  is  already  as  mere  psychological  medium,  apart  from  any 
social  modification,  that  it  is  identified  with  experience  in 
the  sense  examined.  In  another  article,  however,  we  will 
consider  the  fiirther  office  which  Mr.  Lewes  ascribes  to  the 
^  social  medium '  in  the  formation  of  onr  actual  conscious- 
ness. 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAX  MEDIUM.'   471 


PAET  IV. 

MB.  LEWES'  AOCOTTNT  OF  THE   'SOOUL  HEDIUH.* 

[The  first  page  of  the  MS.ii  missing.    The  MS.  begins  with  the  words  '  design 
nated  hj  the  term  experience.'    I  have  supplied  the  rest  of  the  quotation. — Ed.] 

92.  *Wb  have  Been  how  between  the  cosmos  and  the  Mr.  Lewes' 
consciousness  there 'is  interposed  a  psychological  medium,  ^°®^^°®.^ 
briefly  designated  by  the  term  experience.  This  applies  medium.* 
both  to  animals  and  to  men.  But  in  man  we  must  recognise 
another  medium,  one  from  which  his  moral  and  intellectual 
life  is  mainly  drawn,  one  which  separates  him  from  all 
animals  by  the  broadest  line  :  this  is  the  social  medium — the 
collective  accumulations  of  centuries  condensed  in  know- 
ledge, beliefs,  institutions,  and  tendencies,  and  forming 
another  kind  of  psychoplasm  to  which  the  animal  is  a 
stranger.  The  animal  feels  the^cosmos,  and  adapts  himself  tx> 
it.  Man  feels  the  cosmos,  but  he  also  thinks  it :  again  he 
feels  the  social  world,  and  thinks  it.  His  feelings  and  his 
thoughts  of  both  are  powerfully  modified  by  residua.  Hence 
the  very  cosmos  is  to  him  greatly  diflFerent  from  what  it  is 
to  the  animal ;  for  just  as  what  is  organised  in  the  individual 
becomes  transmitted  to  offspring,  and  determines  the  mode 
in  which  the  offspring  will  react  upon  stimulus,  so  what  is 
registered  in  the  social  organism  determines  the  mode  in 
which  succeeding  generations  will  feel  and  think.  •  .  •  No 
animal  can  possibly  perceive  blue  as  we  perceive  it ;  and  the 
reason  is  not  to  be  sought  in  physiological  processes  of  vision, 
but  in  psychological  processes  of  thought.  The  possibility 
of  this  perception  is  due  to  language,  and  language  exists 
only  as  a  social  function.'  .  •  .  '  The  attributes  of  intellect 
and  conscience  are  special  products  of  the  social  organism, 
and  although  animals  possess  in  common  with  man  the  logic 
of  feeling,  they  are  wholly  deficient  in  the  logic  of  signs, 
which  is  a  social,  not  an  animal  function.' ' 

■  Problems  of  lAft  and  Mind,  yol.  i.  pp.  123-5. 


472  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM; 


It  implies 
an  active 
self-con- 
BciousnesB 
which  he 
igoores  or 
rejects. 


Can  the 
fonctjon  of 
<  thinkinff 
the  world  * 
be  evolved 
from  that 
of 'feel- 
ing'it? 


98.  The  above  fairly  summarises  Mr.  Lewes'  doctrine  of 
the  '  social  medium.'  Its  features  will  come  out  more  clearly 
as  we  proceed.  Our  criticism  of  it,  as  it  may  be  well  to  pre- 
mise, will  oot  be  directed  to  showing  that  too  much  is  ms/de 
of  it,  but  rather  too  little.  The  precise  meaning  of  the 
words  *  medium'  and  *  organism/  indeed,  as  used  in  thia 
connection,  and  also  the  question  of  the  relation  between 
them,  would  seem  to  demand  a  closer  examination  than 
appears  in  Mr.  Lewes'  pages.  Bat  that,  popularly  speaking, 
apart  from  society  there  would  be  no  such  thing  as  the 
intelligence,  knowledge,  and  conscience  of  man,  may  be 
taken  as  granted.  The  question  is  whether  in  Mr.  Lewes' 
theory  the  work  of  what  he  deems  the  social,  as  distinct  from 
the  animal,  organism  is  thrown  far  enough  back,  and  whether 
the  existence  of  that  society,  which  conditions  the  intellectual 
and  moral  development  described  by  him,  does  not  imply  an 
agency  of  a  kind  which  he  ignores  or  rejects.  Li  the  func- 
tions which  he  ascribes  to  it  we  find  something  like  an 
adequate  account  of  the  conditions  necessary  to  that  experi- 
ence of  a  world,  that  knowledge  of  objective  facts,  which  we 
have  found  that  the  *  psychological  medium,'  whether  viewed 
as  succession  of  feelings  or  as  neural  process,  can  neither 
be  nor  by  itself  become.  But  these  functions,  as  we  hope  to 
ishow  in  detail,  all  imply  the  presence  and  action  of  that  one 
self-conscious  subject  or  principle  of  synthesis,  which  cannot 
be  physically  exphiined  because  it  conditions  the  possibility 
of  all  physical  explanation,  and  which  Mr.  Lewes  expressly 
pronounces  a  fictitious  'entity.'      For    that  reason   their 

*  medium '  or  *  organism '  either  has  no  real  continuity  with 
— is  not  evolved  from — the  psychological  medium,  or  is  so 
evolved  only  in  so  far  as  functions  are  assigned  to  the  latter, 
which  equally  imply  the  action  of  a  self-conscious  subject, 
and  are  thus  incpnsistent  with  the  natural  history  given 
pf  it. 

94.  It  is  admitted  that  we  only  know  an  organism  through 
its  function,  and  presumably  the  same  may  be  said  of  the 

*  medium,'  which,  according  to  Mr.  Lewes*  usage  of  the 
term,  is  even  more  difScult  to  disting^sh  from  organism 
when  qualified  as  ^  social '  than  when  qualified  as  ^  psychor 
logical.'  As  function  to  function  so  is  medium  to  medium. 
The  question  then  as  to  the  possible  evolution  of  the  social 
from  the  psychological  medium  is  really  a  question  whether 


i^UNIVEHGITY) 
MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE^SOOiAt -MEDIUM.    473 

the  fdnction  to  which  the  former  is  relative  can  be  evolved 
from  that  to  which  the  latter  is  relative.  The  animal, 
according  to  Mr.  Lewes,  in  virtue  of  powers  derived  from  the 
psychological  medium,  *  feels  the  world,'  but  does  not  *  think 
it.'  Man,  in  virtue  of  powers  derived  from  the  social 
medium,  in  particular  by  help  of  the  *  logic  of  signs,'  as 
distinct  from  the  *  logic  of  feeling ' — ^thinks  the  world  as 
well  as  feels  it.  Is  the  *  thinking  the  world,'  then,  really  a 
function  evolved  from  the  *  feeling  it '  ?  Can  it  be  accounted 
for  except  as  implying  an  agency  absolutely  sui  g&n&risy  and 
not  connected  as  effect  with  anything  imx)lied  in  feeling? 

95.  The  answer  must  be  yes  or  no,  according  to  the  sense  Only  if 
in  which  we  speak  of  feeling  the  world.  The  ambiguity  ^^Je^ ' 
which  we  have  had  to  unravel  in  dealing  with  the  *  logic  fused  with 
of  feeling'  and  with  the  'psychological  medium'  still  ^^^^ 
besets  us  here.  When  it  is  said  that  the  animal  feels  the  dnoibie  to 
world,  is  it  meant  that  he  undergoes  a  succession  of  feelings  J^^^?'*^ 
which  '  the  world '  causes,  or  that  in  feeling  he  is  conscious 
of  the  world  as  felt?  To  ignore  this  distinction  is  in  prin- 
ciple the  same  thing  as  to  identify  related  feelings  with  feeling 
of  relation,  and  to  merge  under  the  one  term  *  experience ' 
the  sequence  of  impressions  and  the  cognition  of  objective 
facts.  When  once  it  has  been  recognised,  and  *  feeling  the 
world'  understood  in  the  latter  of  the  two  senses  distin- 
guished, the  wonder  will  be  not  that  Mr.  Lewes,  having 
credited  the  animal  consciousness  with  such  capacity  of 
feeling,  should  hold  the  human  consciousness  to  be  evolved 
from  it,  but  that  he  should  insist  so  strongly  on  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  two,  and  be  able  to  pronounce  so  decisively 
where  the  logic  of  feeling  ends  and  that  of  signs  begins.  The 
truth  is,  however,  that  just  because  he  has  not  acknowledged 
to  himself  the  fusion  of  thought  with  feeling  implied  in  the 
treatment  of  feeling  as  consciousness  of  relations,  he  has 
often  to  make  an  unreal  difference  between  the  work  of  the 
feeling  consciousness  in  perception  and  that  of  the  thinking 
consciousness  in  conception.  Just  in  proportion  as  we  assign 
to  feeling  the  '  logic '  implied  in  consciousness  of  a  world,  its 
distinction  from  thought  tends  to  disappear  on  the  one  side, 
while  the  impossibility  of  its  physical  derivation,  of  its  reduc- 
tion to  neural  process,  becomes  more  apparent  on  the  other. 
It  is  only  in  so  far  as  one  of  these  consequences  is  recognised 
without  the  other  that  a  doctrine  which  seeks  in  feeling  a 


474  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 


Theqnw- 
tkmesnnot 
be  settled 
by  oom- 
pariflon  of 
man  with 
lower  or- 
ganunns. 


connecting  link  between  nature  and  spirit — a  stage  in  a  pro- 
cess by  which,  self-conscious  thought  is  evolved  irom  the  pro^ 
cesses  of  animal  life — can  seem  to  succeed.  It  has  to  show 
on  the  one  hand  that  thought  does  but  render  explicit  what  is 
implicit  in  the  consciousness  of  the  world  as  felt,  and  at  the 
same  time  to  disguise  the  irreducibility  of  such  feeling  con- 
sciousness into  neural  process.  But  in  proportion  as  it 
succeeds  in  the  latter  part  of  its  task,  it  must  be  embarrassed 
in  the  former.  Having  confused  sensation  and  perception, 
it  cannot  properly  recognise  the  mutual  involution  of  per- 
ception and  conception. 

96.  In  considering  the  relation  between  the  feeling  and 
the  thinking  consciousness,  and  what  the  former  must  be  if 
the  latter  is  evolved  from  it,  we  must  not  be  led  a«tray  into 
thinking  that  the  question  can  be  settled,  or  that  any  light 
can  be  thrown  on  it,  by  a  comparison  of  man  with  the  ^  lower 
animals.'  No  discovery  in  regard  to  the  probable  evolution 
of  the  human  from  the  animal  structure,  or  the  apparent 
approximation  of  brutes  to  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  our 
intelligence,  can  have  any  bearing  on  the  question  really  at 
issue.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  question  which  must  be 
settled  before  any  such  discovery  can  find  its  true  interpre- 
tation. Before  we  can  decide  on  the  relation  of  a  higher  to 
a  lower  organism,  we  must  know  what  the  higher  organism 
is,  and  to  know  this  we  must  know  its  function.  Whether 
the  notions  covered  by  the  phrase  ^  human  organism '  would 
bear  a  strict  examination  may  be  doubted ;  but  at  any  rate 
the  only  adequate  conception  of  the  human  organism  must 
be  founded  on  a  knowledge  of  the  actual  content  and  achieve- 
ment of  that  human  consciousness  which  is  its  function. 
If  without  such  a  knowledge  we  approach  the  question  of 
its  relation  to  lower  organisms,  we  shall  be  at  the  mercy  of 
any  fictitious  limitation  in  our  conception  of  it  which  false 
analogies  from  these  may  suggest.  In  like  manner  a  know- 
ledge of  what  human  intelligence  is  must  precede  any  profit- 
able discussion  of  the  question  whether  *  brutes '  have  any- 
thing in  common  with  it.  For  the  ascertainment,  in  short, 
of  what  human  thought  and  feeling  are  we  have  nothiog  to 
resort  to  but  the  analysis  of  what  we  ourselves  are  doing 
and  have  done.  There  are  such  things  as  knowledge,  art, 
and  morality,  which  somehow  are  our  work.  By  considering 
what  we  must  have  done  in  order  to  their  existence,  and  in 
no  other  way,  can  we  learn  the  ultimate  nature  of  the  thought 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    476 

and  feeling  realised  in  them.  We  have  to  ask,  for  instance, 
what  our  consciousness  mnst  have  done,  and  been  in  order  to 
do,  that  there  should  be  for  it  what  we  call  facts,  and  these 
connected  in  a  single  world.  Till  we  have  learnt  something 
of  what  our  consciousness  is  by  such  a  method  as  this,  how- 
eyer  imperfectly  carried  out,  the  physiologist  can  tell  us 
nothing  about  it,  for  there  is  no  question  in  regard  to  it  for 
him  to  answer.  It  is  just  in  so  far  as  some  mental  analysis, 
howeyer  crude,  has  disentangled  some  thread  from  the  web 
we  are  ever  weaving  in  knowledge  and  action,  that  there  is 
Bomething  to  suggest  an  inquiry  into  the  particular  neural 
processes  that  accompany  particular  mental  ones.  And  what- 
ever may  be  the  amount  of  our  acquaintance  with  the  mental 
processes  when  this  inquiry  is  suggested,  such  it  will  remain 
for  anything  that  can  thus  be  added  to  it.  The  inquiry  may 
no  doubt  result  in  discoveries  of  the  greatest  importance  for 
the  benefit  of  man's  estate.  It  is  not,  however,  our  concep- 
tion of  what  our  consciousness  is — ^not  our  knowledge  of 
knowledge — ^that  will  gain  in  clearness  or  fulness  thereby, 
but  our  knowledge  of  the  nervous  organism  that  will  be  en- 
larged by  the  discovery  of  functions  which  it  exercises  in 
relation  to  consciousness. 

97.  It  may  here  be  naturally  objected  that  we  are  making  Forphj- 
an  unreal  distinction ;  that  if  A  is  relative  to  B,  we  cannot  "oiogicai 
increase  our  knowledge  of  A  in  its  relation  to  b  without  fwri  ^e  not 
poMu  increasing  our  knowledge  of  b  ;  and  that  thus,  although  continued 
it  may  be  true  that  we  must  have  some  preliminary  know-  Jl^iousness, 
ledge  of  the  functions  of  consciousness  from  other  than  phy-  ^  chemi- 
siological  sources  in  order  to  examine  it  physiologicaUy,  just  ^J^^e 
as  we  must  in  some  sense  know  what  animal  life  is  before  into  life. 
we  can  examine  the  processes  of  chemical  composition  and 
reaction  which  it  involves,  yet  our  knowledge  of  conscious- 
ness must  be  as  much  increased  by  a  discovery  of  the  neural 
processes  relative  to  it  as  our  knowledge  of  life  by  discoveries 
in  regard  to  the  chemistry  organic  to  it.    A  little  reflection, 
however,  will  show  that  tiiis  objection  is  not  really  valid.    If 
the  function  relative  to  our  consciousness,  which  belongs  to 
neural  process,  were  involved  in  our  consciousness  in  the 
same  way  in  which  chemical  processes  are  involved  in  those 
of  animal  life,  every  step  gained  in  our  acquaintance  with 
this  function  would  also  advance  our  knowledge  of  conscious- 
ness.    But  it  is  not  so.    There  is  no  continuance  of  neural 
process  into  our  consciousness  as  there  is  of  chemical  pro- 


476  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 


Korean 
they  be 
<  nnifona 
antece- 
dents'of 
oonscioiiB- 
nesa,  for 
conscions- 
nessof  an 
event  is 
not  itself 
an  event. 


cesses  into  life.  Life  is  indeed  more  and  other  than 
chemical  changes ;  these  changes  only  contribnte  to  it  in  a 
living  organism ;  but  they  do  enter  into  it,  are  ascertainable 
elements  in  it.  If  chemistry  cannot  teU  ns  how  the  living 
body  is  constmcted,  it  yet  can  tell  us  of  what  it  is  con- 
structed. If  we  analyse  the  growth  of  a  tissue,  or  the  forma- 
tion of  the  blood,  into  its  constituent  processes,  we  find  at 
any  rate  among  these  such  as  are  strictly  chemic^.  It  maj 
not  be  a  complete  account  of  the  origin  of  animal  heat  to 
say  that  it  results  from  the  union  of  oxygen,  derived  through 
respiration  from  the  atmosphere,  with  the  carbon  contained 
in  certain  food-stuffs ;  but  there  is  no  doubt  that  such  oxida- 
tion is  a  constituent  in  its  production.  But  when  we  analyse 
any  determination  or  mode  of  consciousness,  we  do  not  come 
upon  neural  tremors.  If  we  take  the  physiologist's  con- 
sciousness of  the  function  of  the  brain,  or  the  musician's  of 
a  tune  which  he  *  carries  in  his  head,'  and  inquire  what  are 
its  constituents,  what  are  the  conditions  which  together 
make  it  what  it  is,  it  is  with  ideas  or  determinations  of  con- 
sciousness that  we  are  left  in  the  last  resort.  Nothing  that 
the  physiologist  can  detect — no  irritation,  or  irradiation,  or 
affection  of  a  sensitive  organ — enters  into  it  at  all.  The  rela- 
tions which  these  terms  represent  are  all  of  a  kind  absolutely 
heterogeneous  to  and  incompatible  with  the  mutual  deter- 
mination of  ideas  in  the  unity  of  consciousness.  They  all 
imply  distinctions  of  space  and  time  which  that  unity  perhaps 
renders  possible,  but  which  it  excludes  from  itself. 

98.  In  default  of  ability  to  trace  the  processes  of  animal 
life  within  the  sphere  of  consciousness,  we  are  apt  to  fall 
back  on  the  statement  that  the  phenomena  which  the  phy- 
siologist investigates  are  at  any  rate  uniformly  antecedent 
to  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  and  that,  this  being  so, 
we  can  learn  as  much  about  the  mind  from  the  physiologist 
as  we  learn  about  other  phenomena  in  most  cases  of  what 
we  call  a  discovery  of  their  causes.  Bat  what  do  we  mean 
when  we  thus  speak  of  an  antecedence  of  vital  or  neural  phe- 
nomena to  those  of  consciousness?  A  phenomenon  is  a 
sensible  event.  If  ever  the  term  is  used  in  another  sense, 
this  at  any  rate  must  be  its  meaning  here,  for  antecedence 
is  only  possible  as  a  relation  of  event  to  event.  Now  the 
content  of  our  consciousness  does  not  consist  of  sensible 
events.    Unfortunately  we  have  only  one  term  to  represent 


MR.  LEWES*  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    477 

the  *  feeling '  which  really  is  a  sensible  event,  but,  as  such,  is 
not  an  element  in  our  consciousness,  and  of  which  the  phj- 
siologist  can  tell  us  not  only  much,  but  all  that  we  know ; 
and  the  '  feeling '  as  taken  up  into  our  consciousness,  where 
it  is  determined  by  a  complex  of  elements,  none  of  them 
related  as  events  or  in  the  way  of  sequence  and  antecedence 
to  it  or  to  each  other,  and  none  of  them  within  the  ken  of 
physiology.  Thus  having  applied  the  term  *  phenomenon 
of  consciousness '  where  it  may  be  properly  applicable — say 
to  the  occurrence  of  a  sensation  of  colour,  caused  under 
certain  conditions  by  a  particular  irritation  of  the  opfcic 
nerve — we  go  on  to  apply  it  to  what  is  quite  a  different 
thing,  to  the  consciousness  *  I  saw  this  or  that  colour,'  which 
takes  its  whole  character  from  what  is  in  my  mind,  from  the 
thought  of  objects  which  I  know,  or  want,  or  care  about. 
We  speak  as  if  the  consciousness  of  a  sensible  event  were 
itself  a  sensible  event,  forgetting  that  what  makes  an  event 
are  its  relations  of  before  and  after,  and  that  between  the 
consciousness  of  having  experienced  a  sensation  and  the 
other  data  of  consciousness  which  determine  it  there  are  no 
such  relations ;  that  between  the  elements  of  a  consciousness 
of  succession  in  time  there  can  be  no  succession,  between  the 
elements  of  a  consciousness  of  objects  as  limiting  each  other 
in  space  no  such  limitation. 

99.  There  is  no  doubt  a  true  sense  in  which  the  conscious-  Traethat 
ness  of  every  man  has  a  history.     He  passes  through  a  sue-  ▼oa'e  con- 
cession of  states  of  mind,  but  if  we  examine  the  content  of  objects  in 
one  of  these,  we  do  not  find  it,  like  a  state  of  the  body,  ^  *>^^' 
analysable  into  a  congeries  of  processes,  each  consisting  of  a  each  ia  de- 
succession  of  events.     Neither  the  physiologist's  conception  termined 
of  the  circalatory  system,  nor  his  perception  of  the  character-  Jding!^^^ 
istics  of  some  tissue  which  he  is  examining — or  let  us  say, 
to  avoid  ambiguity,  neither  the  conceived  object  as  it  is  in 
consciousness,  nor  the  perceived  object  as  it  is  in  conscious- 
ness— ^is  reducible  to  a  series  of  events,  or  comes  before  or 
after  any  event.     Each  is  a  complex  of  relations,  or  related 
objects  of  consciousness,  of  which  the  equal  presence  and 
interpenetration  are  necessary  to  the  existence  of  the  concep- 
tion or  perception ;  between  which,  therefore,  there  is  no 
sequence  or  antecedence,  any  more  than  there  is  between  the 
complex  as  a  whole  and  any  other  such  complex.    Even 
though  a  motion  be  the  object  perceived,  the  perception  is 


478  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

still  not  analjsable  into  events.  There  is  no  sequence  in  time 
of  one  of  its  constituents  upon  another.  When  I  perceive 
something  to  have  moved,  or  to  be  moving,  from  point  a  to 
point  B,  the  consciousness  of  it  as  at  b  has  no  relation  in 
time  to — is  not  an  event  sequent  upon — the  consciousness  of 
it  as  at  A.  To  suppose  it  so  is  incompatible  with  the  nature 
of  the  perception,  in  which  the  consciousness  of  both  positions 
must  be  one  if  it  is  to  be  a  perception  of  relation  between 
them. 

o^y  does  ^^^-  ^^^^^^J  ^^®^»  i*  °^y  ^  asked,  is  the  meaning  of  a 
Dot  belong  mental  process  P  How  do  we  interpret  the  admitted  fact 
teimi^r  ^^^^  ^®  P*®®  through  a  succession  of  states  of  consciousness, 
the  matter  each  determined  by  the  one  preceding  it?  We  reply  that  an 
of  which  order  of  time  in  which  objects  enter  into  consciousness  is 
coDBciouB.  Bot  to  be  converted  into  a  relation  of  succession  between  the 
objects  as  in  consciousness.  In  using  this  language,  we 
must  not  be  supposed  to  mean  that  the  objects  of  conscious- 
ness are  there  outside  it,  as  objects,  before  they  enter  it,  or 
to  be  confusing  them  with  the  so-called  *  objective  factors,* 
which,  in  connection  with  a  sensitive  organism,  constitute 
sensation.  The  order  of  time  in  which  objects  enter  con- 
sciousness is  simply  the  order  of  our  arrival  at  that  conscious- 
ness of  them  in  which  alone  they  exist.^  Subject  to  this 
proviso,  we  may  say  that  there  is  a  sequence  between  the 
times  a^  which  objects  enter  consciousness,  or  at  which  cer- 
tain determinations  of  consciousness  are  arrived  at,  and  that 
this  is  the  sequence  implied  in  a  '  mental  process,'  so  far  as 
this  is  a  process  in  time,  or  from  event  to  event.  But  once 
in  consciousness — once  the  determinations  of  consciousness 
have  been  arrived  at  and  retained — ^their  relation  to  each 
other  is  of  a  kind  which  excludes  succession,  and  renders  in- 
appropriate the  language  which  describes  them  as  phenomena 
preceded  by  other  phenomena.  When  we  speak  of  a  state  of 
consciousness  as  determined  by  a  preceding  state,  we  mean 
that  some  part  of  the  content  of  the  preceding  state — ^that 
part  which  alone  remains  in  consciousness — is  carried  on 
into,  and  by  its  presence  determines,  the  content  of  the 
other.^  Between  the  determining  and  the  determined  ele- 
ments, then,  as  in  consciousness,  there  is  no  relation  of  time. 
This  relation  obtains  between  the  event  of  passing  into  the 

>  This  must  not  be  taken  to  imply  *  [This  passage   is  ^eried   in  the 

that  the  conscioosnees  first  exists  when      MS. — 'Ed.] 
we  arriTe  at  it. 


MR  LEWES'  AOOOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM;  47d 

one  state  and  that  of  passing  into  the  other,  not  between  the 
matter  of  which  I  am  conscious  in  the  one  state  and  that  of 
which  I  am  conscious  in  the  other — ^matters  which,  though 
distinct,  must  be  united  in  the  same  consciousness,  if  one  is 
to  be  determined  by  the  other.  My  conception,  as  I  read 
one  clause  of  a  sentence,  is  in  one  sense  antecedent  to  the 
conception  which  I  form  on  reading  the  next,  and  in  that 
sense  each  conception  is  an  event ;  but  it  is  just  in  so  far  as 
there  is  no  relation  of  time  between  them,  and  they  are 
blended  in  one  consciousness,  that  one  determines  the  other, 
and  I  understand  the  whole  sentence.  In  this  case  the  con- 
tent of  the  former  state  is  completely  combined  in  conscious- 
ness with  the  content  of  the  latter,  and  thus  there  is  complete 
determination  of  one  by  the  other.  It  is  not  so  if  my  atten- 
tion is  suddenly  called  away  from  what  I  am  reading  by  a 
friend  making  a  remark  on  another  subject.  There  is  then 
no  combination,  or  next  to  none,  of  that  of  which  I  was 
conscious  while  reading  with  that  of  which  I  am  conscious 
while  listening  to  my  friend ;  and  just  so  far  as  there  is 
none,  the  preceding  state  of  consciousness  does  not  deter- 
mine that  which  follows.  Perhaps  a  little  later,  in  reflect- 
ing how  I  have  spent  my  time,  I  may  connect  the  last 
thought  which  the  reading  suggested  to  me  with  my  friend's 
interruption.  If  so,  the  one  state  is  in  memory  determined 
by  the  other,  but  only  so  far  as  they  are  united  in  a  conscious- 
ness, which  is  indeed  a  consciousness  of  a  before  and  after, 
but,  just  because  it  is  so,  is  one  between  the  factors  of  which 
there  is  no  relation  of  before  and  after — one  which,  as  a 
consciousness,  is  neither  an  event  nor  resoluble  into  events. 

101.  We  conclude,  then,  that  while  it  is  in  one  respect  rj^^  ^^ 
correct  to  speak  of  our  states  of  consciousness  as  phenomena  antece- 
or  sensible  events,  it  is  not  as  such  events  that  they  have  the  f^^^  * 
character  which  belongs  to  them  as  states  of  consciousness,  conscioiu- 
They  are  events  so  far  as  we  pass  into  them  and  out  of  them  ^/**  ^ 
again,  and  of  the  phenomena  consisting  in  such  transition  tell  na 
there  are  antecedents  and  sequents  which  the  physiologist  ^^^^^^  <rf 
can  trace.    But  the  event  of  passing  into  the  state  is  not  seiousneBB. 
that  which  makes  it  what  it  is  as  a  state  of  consciousness, 
and  in  learning  the  antecedents  of  the  event  we  learn  nothing 
about  the  consciousness.  It  does  not  contribute  to  an  explana- 
tion of  what  I  perceive  or  conceive  in  looking  over  a  page  of 
Mr.  Lewes'  book  to  be  told  of  the  events  which  take  place  in 


480  MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  *  SOCIAL  MEDIUM/ 

the  sentient  organism  before  and  along  with  the  event  of 
arriving  at  an  intelligence  of  what  is  on  the  page.  Such 
explanations  could  only  be  given  by  analysis  of  the  con- 
stituents of  the  perception,  which,  if  they  were  related  to 
each  other  as  events,  could  not  be  constituents  of  one  con- 
sciousness. Let  us  go  as  far  back  in  mental  history  as  we 
will,  let  us  take  the  most  elementary  perception  possible;  we 
shall  still  find  that,  if  it  m  a  perception,  if  it  has  been  taken 
up  into  consciousness  at  all,  it  has  ipso  facto  ceased  to  be  an 
event.  It  has  become  an  element  in  a  world  in  which 
nothing  happens  before  or  after  another.  If  it  were  right, 
then,  to  regard  the  world  of  consciousness  as  made  up  of 
what  we  call  our  states  of  mind  (instead  of  regarding  these 
as  its  gradual  revelation  to  us),  it  would  still  be  impossible 
to  learn  anything  about  it  by  inquiring  into  physical  antece- 
dents of  these  states ;  for  it  is  not  as  mutually  determining 
elements  in  the  world  of  consciousness,  but  only  in  respect  of 
our  transition  into  them,  that  they  have  antecedents  in  time 
at  all. 
Thif  state-  102.  In  saying,  on  the  strength  of  these  considerations, 
not  com-  ^"^^  consciousness  alone  can  tell  us  what  consciousness  is, 
mitusto  we  shall  fall  under  the  condemnation  of  those  who  oppose 
spective^  an  *  objective '  method  of  psychology,  as  alone  true  and 
method  of  profitable,  to  an  *  introspective '  one  which  they  regard  as 
FogT"  illusive.  But  both  the  introspective  method  and  the  ob- 
jective may  be  understood  in  very  different  ways.  As 
commonly  understood  and  practised,  each  has  made  the 
same  mistake  in  regarding  the  object  of  consciousness  as 
something  outside  and  independent  of  consciousness.  The 
introspective  method  has  undertaken  to  ascertain  the  nature 
of  the  *  subjective  element'  in  knowledge;  to  determine 
what  the  mind  does  for  itself — what  faculties  it  exhibits  and 
what  functions  it  performs — in  perceiving  and  conceiving 
objects  which  are  thought  to  be  there  all  the  same  without 
any  action  on  its  part.  At  every  step,  as  a  matter  of  course, 
it  is  met  by  a  counter-theory,  which  transfers  to  the  object 
what  it  had  claimed  for  the  subject.  The  ^original  fdmi- 
ture '  which  has  been  assigned  to  the  mind,  as  a  condition  of 
its  arriving  at  general  ideas  about  the  world,  is  explained  as 
a  gradual  result  of  the  [action  of  the  ^"1  world  upon  it.  The 
appearance  of  its   originality  is  explained  as  an   illusion 

*  [These  woidB  are  wanting  in  the  HS. — £d.] 


MR.  LE^^ES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM/  481 

naturally  incidental  to  the  introspective  method  in  which 
the  mind  is  at  once  observing  and  observed,  and  from  which 
it  thus  results  that  qualities  are  ascribed  to  the  mind  in  its 
genesis  which  in  fact  only  belong  to  it  as  developed  in  the 
observer.  The  true  answer  to  this  objection  is  one  which 
the  method  in  question  has  precluded  itself  from  making. 
Having  begun  with  a  false  separation  of  subject  and  object, 
with  the  admission  that  related  objects  of  consciousness  are 
the  given  matter  from  or  upon  which  the  subject  begins  its 
operations  of  abstraction  and  analysis,  it  cannot  resist  the 
suggestion  that  what  is  called  the  power  to  perform  them  is 
ultimately  due  to  the  action  of  the  objects  of  which  the  rela- 
tions are  analysed  and  abstracted.  The  consciousness  of 
relation  is  so  thoroughly  involved  in  the  experience  of  related 
objects  that  if,  as  introspective  psychology  has  generally 
allowed,  such  experience  is  to  be  regarded  as  resulting  from 
the  action  of  an  external  nature  upon  a  sentient  organism,  and 
thus  as  antecedent  to  that  work  of  the  mind  which  is  to  be 
introspectively  examined,  it  is  far  more  rational  to  trace 
what  are  considered  distinctively  our  processes  of  thought — 
the  detachment  and  combination  of  ideas  of  relation — to  an 
origin  in  habits  gradually  produced  by  the  action  of  objects 
on  the  sentient  organism,  than  to  refer  them  to  original 
faculties  of  the  consciousness  on  which  the  objects  are  sup- 
posed to  act. 

103.  We  are  thrown  back,  then,  upon  an  analysis  of  the  The  fiil- 
*  experience  of  objects.'    It  is  agreed  that  a  psychological  Jj^f^.^  j„ 
method  which  is  introspective  without  being  objective,  which  treating 
regards  the  objects  of  consciousness  as  not  coming  within  its  ^*  o^i^ 
view,  and  merely  interrogates  consciousness  as  to  its  opera-  side'con- 
tions  upon  them,  cannot  hold  its  own.    It  must  be  superseded  J^^gjuir^ 
by  an  inquiry  into  objects.    But  what  are  the  objects  to  be  by  the 
inquired  into  P    Are  we  to  consider  them  as  objects  external  *°^^?^^*' 
to  consciousness,  and  by  their  action  upon  the  sentient 
organism  producing  it,  or  as  objects  existing  in  conscious- 
ness, the  universe  which  it  contains,  groups  of  relations 
which  it  presents  to  itself  as  uniform,  and  thus  as  other 
than,  but  at  the  same  time  the  reality  of,  the  feelings  that 
come  and  go  9    The  psychological  method,  which  calls  itself 
objective,  has  adopted  the  former  view,  though  without  clear 
recognition  of  what  it  was  about  in  doing  so  or  of  the  an- 
tagonism between  the  one  view  and  the  other.     It  has  held 

VOL.   I*  II 


489   MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

to  the  position,  conceded  by  the  introBpedaonists  of  the 
school  of  Locke,  that  the  experience  of  related  objects,  in 
which  the  whole  work  of  consciousness  is  implicitlj  con- 
tained, is  given  ah  extra  through  modification  of  the  sentient 
organism — through  processes  which  are  not  part  of  the  work 
of  consciousness,  but  from  which  it  results.  Investigation 
of  these  processes,  accordingly,  it  has  taken  to  constitute 
the  only  valid  psychology.  In  so  doing,  it  has  been  taking 
certain  relations  between  objects,  which  only  belong  to  them 
as  being  what  consciousness  has  made  them,  to  explain  the 
fact  of  there  being  the  conscioasDCss  to  which  they  owe  their 
existence.  ^The  external  in  relation  to  sentience'  ia  one 
among  others  of  the  objects  of  consciousness — ^an  object  of 
which  the  ^  relation  to  sentience '  is  as  much  a  constituent 
as  the  ^external.'  It  is — to  quote  language  which  Mr. 
Lewes  uses  against  idealism — ^a  fact  indissolubly  woven 
into  consciousness.'  It  is  only  as  so  woven  that  there  is 
such  a  thing  for  us  at  all.  In  other  words,  the  *  external 
in  relation  to  sentience,'  just  becaase  an  object  of  consciouB- 
ness,  is  not  external  to  consciousness.  The  world  *  outside 
consciousness '  is  in  truth  blank  nothing,  which  we  delude 
ourselves  into  supposing  to  be  something  by  stocking  it  with 
abstractions  from  the  actual  content  of  consciousness,  called 
*  things-in-tbemselves.'  The  *  external,'  however,  doubtless 
exists  under  other  relations  than  that  in  which  it  stands  to 
sentience.  It  does  not  depend  on  sentience  to  be  what  it 
is.  Thus  the  *  objective' — or,  as  they  may  more  properly 
be  called,  the  physical — psychologists,  having  begun  by  con- 
fusing sentience  with  consciousness,  come  to  regard  'the 
external'  as  independent  of  consciousness.  They  convert 
that  externality,  which  is  one  of  the  relations  whereby  con- 
sciousness connects  its  objects,  and  which  apart  from  it  is 
nothing,  into  an  externality  to  consciousness,  and  then 
suppose  the  processes  in  which  the  external  comes  into  re- 
lation with  sentience  to  be  processes  in  which  consciousness 
is  generated.  A  product  of  consciousness — or,  to  speak  more 
precisely,  a  certain  correlation  of  matter  and  organism  be- 
longing to  the  *  universe  which  arises  in  consciousness,'  or 
to  that  objective  world  to  the  existence  of  which  it  is 
admitted  that  a  subject  is  necessary — is  thus  employed  to 
account  for  the  origin  of  consciousness.  Such  a  procedure, 
when  once  cleared  of  the  glamour  with  which  the  confused 
associations  of  the  term  'external'  surround  it,  can  only 


MR.  LEWES'  AOCOtJOT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  483 

Temind  ns  of  Baron  Mxincliaasen's  feat  in  swinging  himself 
across  a  stream  by  the  sleeve  of  his  own  coat. 

104.  We  conclade  that  a  theory  of  consciousness,  to  be  ^or  phy- 
-worth  anything,  must  rest  on  an  examination  of  objects —  Sm^ao 
not,  however,  of  objects  as  existing  independently  of  con-  count  for 
scionsness  and  then  making  it  ah  extra,  but  rather  as  made  fn^j^' 
by  it,  as  exhibiting  in  their  constitutive  relations  the  work  it  in  itself 
of  the  consciousness  in  and  through  which  alone  they  are  ^^JL* 
related.  Physiology  has  no  special  connection  with  it,  no 
connection  other  than  that  which  chemistry  or  mechanics 
has.  There  is  a  process,  as  Mr.  Lewes  tells  us  in  words  that 
we  often  quote,  through  which  '  the  cosmos  arises  in  con-  ^ 
scionsness.'  We  should  prefer  to  say  that  through  it  the 
consciousness  for  which  the  cosmos  eternally  exists  becomes 
partially  ours.  Physiology,  as  one  of  the  natural  sciences,  is  a 
stage  in  this  process.  The  general  theory  of  consciousness, 
seeking  to  learn  what  it  is  by  what  it  does,  has  only  to  take 
special  account  of  this  stage  in  the  process  so  far  as  it  is 
distinguished  from  other  stages  by  some  peculiarity  in  the 
relations,  of  which  the  consciousness  becomes  ours  in  physio- 
logy, as  compared  with  those  of  which  the  consciousness 
becomes  ours  in  other  sciences,  and  so  far  as  such  peculiarity 
in  the  relations  implies  a  distinct  function  on  the  part  of  the 
consciousness  realised  in  their  existence.  The  experience 
of  phenomena  as  related  in  the  way  of  organic  life — so  related 
as  each  to  be  at  once  the  producer  and  the  product  of  the 
other— implies  a  further  action  of  the  synthetic  principle 
beyond  that  implied  in  the  experience  of  them  as  chemically 
or  mechanically  related,  and  accordingly  presents  a  distinct 
problem  to  the  philosophy  which  inquires  how  experience  is 
possible,  or  what  are  the  forms  of  synthesis  under  which 
consciousness  constructs  its  world.  It  is  in  this  sense  only 
that  physiology  has  a  connection  of  its  own  with  psychology, 
BO  fax  as  psychology  means  a  theory  of  consciousness ;  and 
in  any  other  meaning  it  is  simply  a  branch  of  physiology. 
It  is  not  that  physiology  helps  to  account  for  the  origin  of 
consciousness,  for  we  have  seen  that  consciousness,  not  con- 
sisting in  phenomena  sequent  on  other  phenomena,  can  with 
no  more  propriety  be  traced  to  an  origin  in  those  of  life  than 
in  those  of  simple  mechanism ;  but  merely  that,  as  a  special 
science,  it  exhibits  one  among  other  functions  of  consciousness 
which  the  theory  of  these  functions  must  separately  consider. 

II  2 


484  ME.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

Ur.  LewM       105.  Being  satisfied,  then,  that  for  ascertaining  the  nature 
MdeaHsm'  ^^  consciousness,  alike  in  that  form  in  which  Mr.  Lewes 
by  making  treats  it  as  a  function  of  the  social  organism,  and  in  that 
Murai°r^  which  he  ascribes  to  the  merely  psychological  (so  far  as  the 
action  and  latter  is  consciousness  at  all),  neither  physiology  nor  obser- 
a  wriA'^^  vation  of  animals  will  avail  ns,  we  fall  back  on  analysis  of 
what  consciousness  does  in  the  functions  described  severally 
as  '  feeling  the  world '  and  ^  thinking  the  world/     The  basis 
of  Mr.  Lewes'  doctrine  is  the  treatment  of  sentience  as  on 
the  one  hand  one  and  the  same  fact  with  neural  excitation, 
only  looked  at  from  a  different  side ;  on  the  other  as  eqniva* 
lent  to  the  consciousness  called  *  feeling  the  world.'    It  is  by 
ihis  that  he  is  enabled  to  avoid  the  ^  idealism '  which  might 
otherwise  seem  the  necessary  result  of  the  admission  that 
our  world  arises  in  consciousness,  and  that  an  object  implies 
a  subject.    Our  world,  he  holds,  does  indeed  arise  in  con- 
sciousness, but  it  so  arises  as  a  result  of  forces  which  have 
not  so  arisen.     These  have  gradually  brought  about  the 
evolution  of  the  organism  int'O  that  state  in  which  it  sen- 
tiently  responds  to  them,  and  the  sentient  response  consti- 
tutes the  feelings  and  perceptions  which  form  the  reality  of 
our  world.     Because  the  reaction  of  the  organism  is  as 
necessary  to  constitute  sentience  as  tbe  action  from  without 
to  which  it  responds,  every  object  *  is  necessarily  subject- 
object,'  but  it  is  owing  to  previous  action  on  the  part  of  an 
*  external  real ' — primarily,  we  must  suppose,  of  an  external 
to  which  there  is  as  yet  no  sentient  response— that  the  organ- 
ism is  in  a  state  to  rea-ct  as  it  does.     A  consideration  of 
the  realism  which  it  is  thus  sought  to  establish,  and  of 
which  a  sununary  in  Mr.  Lewes'  own  words  is  subjoined,  will 
clear  the  way  for  an  understanding  of  what  is  involved  in 
feeling  the  world. 
His  106.  ^  Between  realism  and  idealism,  I  should  say  that  the 

•realism.'  qu^gtion  must  be  rendered  more  definite  by  a  preliminary 
settlement  as  to  whether  we  ask  a  question  of  psychogeny,  or 
a  question  of  psychology.  If  it  is  the  genesis  of  our  modes 
of  sentient  reaction,  and  their  relation  to  the  external,  which 
we  consider,  then  the  answer  will  take  the  realistic  form ; 
since  psychogeny,  tracing  the  evolution  of  sensibility  in  the 
organic  world,  must  conclude  that  it  is  the  external  order 
which  determines  the  internal  order,  by  determining  the 
organic  structure  of  which  sensibility  is  the  property:  theevola- 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM/  486 

tion  of  perceptions,  instincts,  volitions,  conceptions  is  throngh 
successive  adaptations  of  the  successively  modified  struc- 
ture; precisely  as  the  evolution  of  all  the  vital  phenomena  is 
through  successive  adaptations.  But  if  the  question  be  not  one 
of  genesis,  if  it  assume  the  existence  of  the  organised  structure 
v?ith  its  developed  aptitudes,  the  answer  will  be  a  sort  of  com- 
promise between  the  realistic  and  idealistic  answers.  Psycho- 
logy, accepting  the  developed  organism  as  one  of  the  factors 
in  the  fact  of  perception,  estimates  the  influence  of  this  co- 
operant,  and  concludes  that,  since  the  organism  necessarily 
reacts  according  to  its  modes,  it  may  be  said  to  colour  objects, 
although  this  mode  of  reaction  is  itself  a  mode  origitially  due 
to  the  action  of  objects.  It  is  light  which  fashions  the  retina 
to  luminous  responses.  Not  that  the  external  real  which 
stimulates  the  retina  can  be  supposed  to  be  itself  luminous;  it 
is  only  one  factor  of  the  luminous  product.  Nor  can  the  retina, 
apart  from  stimulation,  be  luminous ;  it  also  is  only  one  factor. 
But  light — the  object — is  both  factors:  thus  the  object  is 
necessarily  object-subject;  and  subject  is  equally  subject- 
object.*  * 

107.  In  the  first  place  let  us  observe  that  according  to  Mr.  He  makes 
Lewes*  own  showing  the  terms  external  and  objective  are  by  ^®  ^^i^^^ 
no  means  equivalent.  Of  the  object,  according  to  the  account  to  its  own 
given  in  an  instance  which  he  takes  as  typical,  outwardness  internal 
is  not  properly  predicable  at  all.  The  sensation  of  light  is  j^the'^" 
explained  as  the  result  of  what  are  called  ^external  and  correlatiTe 
internal  factors,'  the  external  being  the  vibration  of  ether, 
which  stimulates  the  optic  nerve ;  the  internal  being  the 
organism,  which  responds  to  the  stimulus.  But,  as  Mr. 
Lewes  is  careful  to  tell  us,  ^  light — the  object — is  both  fac- 
tors.* What,  then,  becomes  of  the  externality  of  the  object? 
It  is  clearly  not  external  in  the  sense  of  acting  from  without 
on  the  sentient  organism,  for  that  which  so  acts  is  expressly 
shown  not  to  be  the  object — ^to  be  no  more  the  object  than 
either  the  retina  alone,  or  the  vibration  of  ether  alone,  is 
luminous.  Mr.  Lewes,  however,  while  he  admits  this,  is 
still  so  far  under  the  dominion  of  the  old  confusion  between 
the  external  and  the  objective  that  he  never  fully  realises 
what  is  involved  in  bis  own  admission.  In  the  very  context 
in  which  he  makes  it,  we  find  him  lapsing  into  a  statement 
which  identifies  the  relation  of  object  to  subject  with  the 

I  Problems  of  Li/h  and  Mind,  vol.  i.  pp.  185,  186. 


of  it. 


486  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

relation  between  the  external  and  internal  factors  of  the 
former,  and  thus  making  the  object  objective  to  one  of  its 
own  constitueuts.  The  real  reason,  it  may  be  snrmised,  why 
this  inconsistency  escapes  him  is  that  in  tmth,  though  the 
objectiye  is.  not  external,  the  external  is  objective.  The 
'external  factor!  of  the  object  light,  for  instance,  is  not 
indeed  that  object ;  it  is  not  objective  to  the '  internal  factor ' 
of  that  olg'ect;  but  just  because  it  is  a  factor  of  the  object 
it  is  objective  (though  only  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the 
*  internal  foctor'  is  so)  to  the  consciousness  for  which  ^a 
blur  of  feeling '  has  become  a  relation  between  matter  and 
an  organism.  A  true  persuasion  of  the  objectivity  of  the 
external,  and  a  false  one  as  to  the  equivalence  of  sentience  to 
consciousness,  thus  combine  to  yield  the  notion  that  what 
the  object  is  objective  to  is  its  sentient  or  internal  factor, 
and  hence  that  it  is  outside  its  correlative  subject.  It  might 
have  been  hoped  that  when  the  ^  external  real '  came  to  be 
traced  back,  as  Mr.  Lewes  traces  it,  to  a  state  of  existence 
prior  to  that  in  which  it  has  a  sentient  organism  to  respond 
to  it,  the  logical  difficulties  of  the  position  would  have  led  to 
its  reconsideration.  With  the  ^  external  &ctor '  of  light  the 
object  (light)  can  plausibly  be  identified,  without  recognition 
of  the  synthetic  consciousness  to  which  it  is  reaUy  objective, 
because  the  ^  internal  factor,'  though  at  the  cost  of  contra- 
dicting the  admission  that  the  object  is  both  Actors,  can  be 
made  to  do  duty  as  subject.  But  where  there  is  no  *  internal 
factor,'  as  in  tiie  presentient  cosmos,  or  in  the  boundless 
regions  where  the  forces  at  work  are  unanswered  by  reactions 
in  the  way  of  feeling  or  life,  if  the  equivalence  of  objectivity 
with  externality  is  to  be  maintained,^  there  should  be  no 
object.  That  both  Mr.  Lewes  and  his  believing  readers  in 
fact  regard  the  object  as  surviving  the  disappearalnce  of 
sentient  reaction,  is  enough  to  show  that,  however  they  may 
interpret  and  formulate  their  thoughts,  it  is  not  really  this 
reaction  which  they  think  of  as  the  subject-consciousness 
implied  in  the  existence  of  an  object*. 
Nor  can  108.  It  may  be  replied  here,  perhaps,  that  it  is.  not  in  its 

ondewtood  objectivity  that  Mr.  Lewes  supposes  the  object  to  exist  when 
in  anj  or  where  the  response  of  sentience  is  absent ;  that  what  so 
exists  he  regards,  indeed,  as  real,^  but  as  objective  only  pro- 

'  [Here  there  is  a  queried  mark  of         <  [' Beal' is  queried  in  the  MS.— £d.] 
omiBsion  in  the  MS.~£o.] 


MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    487 

lepticallj  or  in  the  indirect  sense  of  being  ascertainably  which  docs 
related  to  what  actually  affects  our  senses.  We  will  not  J^i^J™n^l[„ 
here  inquire  how  such  an  answer  would  fit  the  definition  of  eonscious- 
the  real  as  the  felt.  It  is  enough  to  point  out  that  ascer-  "'***• 
tainable  relations,  apart  from  a  consciousness  to  which  they 
are  relative,  are  a  contradiction,^  and  that  objects  ^ascer- 
tainably related/  apart  from  the  relations,  are  nothing  at  all. 
That  which  is  ascertainably  related  to  the  objects  of  expe- 
rience cannot  itself  be  other  than  such  an  object.  There  is 
no  possible  inference  from  experience  to  what  is  beyond 
experience.  A  discovery  of  cause  is  always  an  apprehension 
of  some  relation  not  previously  understood  between  facts  of 
experience,  never  a  discovery  of  anything  of  which  there  is 
no  experience.  Mr.  Lewes  himself  on  occasion  is  quite 
ready  to  pull  to  pieces  the  crude  notion  of  objects  as  ^  things ' 
which  are  there  independently  of  the  relations  that  form  the 
content  of  onr  experience.  An  object,  in  fact,  is  always  a 
relation,  or  congeries  of  relations,  and  consciousness  is  the 
only  medium  in  which  relations  exist  for  us.  Whether  they 
can  exist  otherwise  is  as  idle  a  question  as  whether  plants 
could  grow  without  an  atmosphere.  It  is  quite  true  that 
the  relations  which  form  the  object-matter  of  our  knowledge 
do  not  come  into  being  with  the  experience  which  I  or  any 
one  may  happen  to  have  of  them,  but  on  the  other  hand, 
except  as  relations  of  what  is  relative  to  consciousness,  they 
are  simply  nothing;  nor,  unless  we  suppose  consciousness 
with  its  world  to  come  into  existence  over  and  over  again  as 
this  man  or  that  becomes  conscious,  is  there  any  difficulty  in 
reconciling  these  two  propositions.  We  are  apt  to  speak  of 
the  world  as  refiecting  itself  in  the  mirror  of  consciousness, 
and  the  metaphor  misleads  us  into  imagining  an  existence  of 
the  world,  apart  fix)m  the  refiection.  We  forget  that  while 
the  mirrored  object  is  related  to  our  senses  in  many  other 
ways  than  through  its  reflection  in  the  mirror,  it  is  only 
through  consciousness  that  the  world  exists  for  us  at  all. 
Even  the  *  thing-in-itself,'  on  examination,  turns  out  to  be 
simply  a  name  for  the  unity  of  relation  subsisting  between  all 
objects  as  a  result  of  their  being  taken  into  the  unity  of  con- 
sciousness ;  in  other  words,  of  their  becoming  objects. 

109.  If  it  is  found,  then,  that  the  joint  action  of  the  *  ex-  Coemio 
temal  real'  and  of  the  sentient  organism  implies  the  action,  ^"^'^*'* 

I  [This  passage  b  queried  in  th'^  MS.~Ed.] 


488  MB.  LEWES'  ACCX)UNT  OF  THE  -SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 


•otjectira 
before  the 
beginniDg 
of  sentient 
life  as 
alter  iL 


EquiTOCft- 
tiun  be- 
tween re- 
sponse to 
Btimnliui 
and  con- 
sciousness 
of  facts. 
Effect  on 
his  doc- 
trine of 
percep- 


previously  in  time  and  elsewhere  in  space,  of  cosmic  forces 
withont  yital  or  sentient  response,  snch  forces  are  not  to  be 
regarded  as  *  reals/  independent  of  relation  to  conscioosness, 
or  as  ^  objects '  which,  not  being  related  to  a  subject,  are  not 
properly  objectiye.  They  are  objective  in  precisely  the  same 
sense — ^not  indeed  as  the  '  external  factor'  of  light  is  objec- 
tive to  the  luminous  response,  for  here,  as  we  have  learnt 
from  Mr.  Lewes  himself,  there  is  no  relation  of  objectivity  at 
all — but  as  the  fact  of  the  production  of  light  by  the  joint 
operation  of  the  stimulus  from  without  and  the  sentient 
response.  They  are,  in  truth,  but  an  extension  or  further 
determination  of  the  object,  consisting  in  this  particular 
relation  between  sense  and  its  immediate  stimulant.  They 
are  relations  of  this  relation,  united  with  it  in  one  world  of 
experience  and  presupposing,  as  condition  of  this  unity,  one 
subject  to  which  all  elements  of  the  experience  are  equally 
related. 

110.  The  bearing  of  this  discussion  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
objective  on  the  interpretation  of  the  consciousness  called 
^  feeling  the  world '  will  appear  as  we  proceed.  If  it  is  not 
to  its  *  internal  factor '  that  an  object  is  objective ;  if  the 
fact  that  a  sensation  of  light  occurs  is  a  fact,  or  object,  not 
to  the  neural  reaction,  which  is  one  of  the  constituents  of 
the  fact,  but  to  the  consciousness  which  ultimately  comes  to 
explain  the  fact — ^to  connect  it  with  other  experiences — as 
such  a  relation  between  the  optic  nerve  and  an  external 
stimulus;  then,  whatever  else  is  meant  by  'feeling  the 
world,'  it  cannot  properly  mean  the  sentient  response,  or 
series  of  such  responses,  which  forms  part  of  the  facts  of 
the  world.  When  we  speak  of  feeling  the  world,  we  mean 
to  express  some  sort  of  consciousness  to  which  the  facts  of 
the  world,  or  a  portion  of  them,  are  an  object,  and,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  sentient  response,  being  a  constituent  of  a 
certain  kind  of  £Etct,  cannot  also  be  the  consciousness  which 
distinguishes  the  fact  from  itself  as  its  object.  When  Mr. 
Lewes,  in  spite  of  admissions  which  logically  lead  to  it, 
persists  in  ignoring  this  distinction  of  sentience  from  the 
consciousness  of  fact,  he  is  repeating  the  error,  which  we 
have  already  examined,  of  identifying  a  succession  of  feel- 
ings with  the  '  feeling '  of  relation,  and  the  modification  of 
the  organism  by  the  recurrence  of  certain  neural  excite- 
ments with  the  accumulation  of  facts  in  an  experience.    In 


MR  LEWES    ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  489 

each  of  its  forms  the  mistake  serves  the  same  purpose  in 
his  theory — a  purpose  which  could  not  be  served  without  it. 
It  serves,  according  to  our  old  formula,  to  make  the  expe- 
rience of  force  appear  as  the  result  of  force,  or  the  know- 
ledge of  the  world  as  an  effect  produced  in  consciousness  bj 
something  independent  of  it.  In  the  connection  now  before 
us,  it  is  the  same  standing  equivocation  that  appears  under 
a  slight  variation  of  expression.  Sentience  is  taken  to  be 
at  once  the  *  feeling  of  a  world,'  and  the  neural  response  to 
the  action  of  an  external  stimtdant.  Taking  it  in  the 
former  sense,  Mr.  Lewes  is  able  to  treat  it  as  the  channel 
through  which  the  *  world  arises  in  consciousness  ' ;  taking 
it  in  the  latter,  he  can  treat  the  world  so  arising  as  the 
effect  of  another  world  without.  We  propose  now  to  con- 
sider somewhat  more  in  detail  how  the  doctrine  of  percep- 
tion, and  in  consequence  that  of  the  relation  between  the 

*  psychological  and  social  media,'  on  which  perception  and 
conception  severally  depend,  are  affected  by  this  cUmble 
entendre. 

111.  In  every  philosophy  the  theory  of  perception  must  of  this 
correspond  to  the  notion  of  the  real.    In  perception  we  are  J?*®  ^«y . 

liP8  in  bis 

conscious  of  the  real  as  real,  and  if  we  claim  reality  for  doctriDe  of 
anything  that  cannot  be  perceived  we  are  at  least  bound  to  *jj?  "»|- 
show  its  implication  in  what  can  be.     It  is  in  Mr.  Lewes'  is  g^ven  in 
doctrine  of  the  real,  then,  that  we  must  look  for  a  key  at  'feeling'? 
once  to  what  is  true  and  what  is  false  in  his  doctrine  of 
perception.    We  have  already  noticed  his  statements  that 

*  the  real  is  what  is  actually  given  in  feeling,'  and,  again, 
that  'existence  is  real  when  felt  or  perceived,'  and  have 
found  that  the  *  feeling '  which  he  regards  as  the  conveyance 
to  us  of  the  real  is  determined  by  a  consciousness  which  he 
is  pleased  to  call  *  virtual  feeling,'  *  the  logic  of  feeling,' 

*  a  feeling  of  the  relation  between  feelings,'  but  which  is 
wholly  irreducible  to  such  feeling  as  can  be  identified  with 
an  occurrence,  or  with  successive  occurrences,  of  neural 
excitation.  We  have  now  to  look  at  the  ^  real,'  so  to  speak, 
from  the  other  side ;  to  consider  not  so  much  the  '  feeling ' 
that  gives  it,  as  what  it  is  that  is  given.  On  this  point  Mr. 
Lewes'  views  are  most  summarily  stated  in  the  following 
passages : — 

(a)  'The  sensation,  or  presentation,  is  fitly  considered 
real,  because  it  has  objective  reality  {res)  for  its  antecedent 


490  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

stimnlas.  '  The  re-presentation,  whether  image  or  symbol,  ia 
ideal^  because  its  antecedent  is  a  subjective  state.  Bealitj 
always  indicates  that  antecedent  which  excites  Bensation 
when  in  direct  relation  with  the  sensory  organism.  Hence 
we  say  that  a  feeling  is  real  when  it  is  felt,  ideal  when  it  is 
only  thought,  not  felt  •  •  •  An  image,  therefore — ^being  a 
representation,  an  indirectly  excited  feeling — may  be  called 
the  ideal  form  of  a  sensation.  It  is  a  transition  between 
the  pure  real  and  the  pure  ideal ;  i.e.  between  sensation  and 
symbol.  Because  of  its  connection  with  sensation,  it  passes 
into  pure  sensation  when  the  energy  of  its  tremors  is  greatly- 
increased;  as  in  hallucination,  wherein  the  feeling,  although 
excited  by  internal  stimuli,  having  its  antecedent  in  a  sub- 
jective state,  and  not  in  some  objective  res,  does  assume  all 
the  energy  of  a  sensation  objectively  excited.'  * 

{h)  ^  Whatever  is  fdt  is  necessarily  real,  since  reality  and 
feeling  are  correlative.  Feeling  only  arises  in  the  sensible 
excitation  of  the  organism  by  something  acting  upon  it, 
whereas  whatever  is  thoughty  conceived,  is  necessarily  sym- 
bolical, since  conceptions  are  not  perceptions  but  symbols. 
•  •  •  This  contrast  between  conception  and  perception, 
between  the  symbolical  and  the  real,  .  •  .  marks  my  dis- 
sent from  the  theory  of  Transfigured  Realism,  upheld  by 
Helmholtz  and  Spencer ;  for  that  theory  professes  to  be  a 
theory  of  perception,  and  declares  perception  to  be  sym- 
bolical ;  whereas,  according  to  the  principles  here  expounded, 
perception  being  the  resultant  of  the  two  factors,  internal 
and  external,  the  conclusion  deduced  is  that  the  object  thus 
felt  exists  precisely  as  it  is  felt;  existing  for  us  only  in 
feeling,  its  reality  is  what  we  feel.  The  g^eat  thinkers 
whom  I  am  here  opposing  fully  admit  the  premises  of  this 
conclusion,  with  this  reservation;  they  hold  that,  since  the 
internal  factor  is  a  necessary  co-operant,  it  must  alter  by  its 
co-operation  the  character  of  the  external,  and  the  product 
of  the  two  will  be  unlike  either.  ...  I  shall  endeavour, 
however,- ...  to  show  that  perception,  because  it  is  a 
resultant,  not  a  symbol,  does  not  alter  the  real;  on  the 
contrary,  an  object  only  is  to  us  what  we  feel  it  to  be — it 
exists  in.  that  relation.  This  does  not,  of  course,  exclude 
the  possibility  of  the  external  factor  having  another  existence 
in  relation  to  other  factors;  all  that  can  legitimately  be 

'  PmbUms  qf  Life  and  Mind,  voL  i.  p.  149. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    ^tt 

affirmed  is  that  this  particular  thing  in  this  particular  rela- 
tion is  what  it  is  in  this  relation — i.e.  what  it  is  felt  to  be. 
What  we  mean  bj  saying  that  a  thing  is  real  simply  amounts 
to  this ;  it  will  always  in  such  or  such  relations  have  such  or 
such  modes  of  ezistence^  and  in  all  similar  relations  similar 
modes.'  * 

112.  On  a  careful  study  of  the  above  passages  it  will  be  Hissngwez 
found,  we  think,  that  there  are  three  conflicting  views  of  the  J?P^'®* 
real  which  underlie  them.    According  to  one  of  these  the  flicting 
real  is  the  external,  as  such,  of  which  feeling  is  necessarily  a  J^^'  P) 
true  presentation  to  us  because  producible  by  nothing  else;  the^exteiT 
according  to  another  it  is  feeling,  as  such — ^the  immediate  nai  as  ex- 
datiim  of  consciousness   about  which  we  cannot  be  mis-  **"  ' 
taken ;  ^  according  to  the  third,  it  is  a  system  of  uniform 
and  permanent  relations,  which  constitute  the  reality  of 
feeling.     In  passage  (a)  it  is  clear  that  the  basis  of  distinc- 
tion between  the  ^  presentation '  as  real  and  ^  representation  * 
as  ideal  lies  in  the  supposition  that  it  is  some  external  efficient 
of  the  presentation  which  is  real  in  its  own  right,  and  that 
sensation  is  so  only  as  its  direct  effect.     Nay,  the  statement 
that  sensation  must  be  real,  even  in  this  derivative  sense, 
though  positively  made  and    constantly  repeated  by  Mr. 
Lewes,  has  to  be  understood,  it  would  seem,  with  a  qualifi- 
cation.   Hallucination,  according  to  his  account,  in  respect 
of  the  neural  tremors  which  constitute  it,  does  not  differ 
from  sensation.    Indeed,  he  speaks  of  it  as  an  image  which 
has  ^passed  into  pure  sensation.'     It  has  '  ail  the  energy  of 
a  sensation  objectively  excited,'  but  because  it  has  *  its  ante- 
cedent in  a  subjective  state,'  it  is  not  real.    Here  evidently 
the  object,  instead  of  being  regarded  in  what  Mr.  Lewes 
elsewhere  tells  us  is  the  right  way,  as  resulting  from  the 
joint  operation  of  external  and  internal  factors,  of  matter 
and  the  organism,  is  being  identified  with   the  external 
factor;  and  a  feeling,  which  would  otherwise  be  pronounced 
a  sensation  and  necessarily  real,  is  treated  as  unreal  because 
the  ei^temal  factor  acts  less  directly  in  its  production.     It  is 
not  the  case,  let  it  be  observed,  that  the  real  sensation  is  the 
produjct  simply  of  matter,  the  hallucination  of  the  organism. 
The  reaction  of  the  organism  is  necessary  to  constitute  the 
real  sensation,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  though  hallucination 

*  Problems  qf  Life  and  Mind,  vol.  i.  *  ProbUnts  of  Life  and  Mind^  toI.  u 

pp  191-193.  p.  267. 


492  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

is  said  to  be  produced  by  internal  stimali,  these  are  in  fact 
always  brought  into  play  by  some  stimulus  from  without; 
and,  since  they  are  conditioned  by  previous  modifications  of 
structure,  are  ultimately  as  much  the  results  of  interaction 
between  matter  and  the  organism  as  are  the  ordinary  reac- 
tions of  sensation.  Thus,  if  externality  of  stimulus  is  to  be 
our  ground  for  distinguishing  one  sensation,  as  perception 
of  the  real,  from  another,  otherwise  just  like  it,  as  hallucinap- 
tion,  the  most  that  can  be  said  is  that,  while  action  of 
matter  and  reaction  of  organism  are  necessary  to  constitute 
each,  and  while  in  the  case  of  hallucination  there  is  always 
some  present  and  immediate  stimulus  from  without,  still  in 
the  latter  case  there  is  not  that  particular  stimulus  from 
without  which,  in  the  ordinary  state  of  the  organism,  pro- 
duces that  particular  feeling. 
How,then,  113.  According  to  this  view,  then,  though  the  co-operation 
Swi  be**"  ^f  *^^  organism  or  internal  factor  is  necessary  to  constitute 
like  the  any  sensation  or  sensible  object,  it  is  in  respect  not  of  this 
ifhemakM  co-operation  but  of  a  relation  to  matter  acting  from  without 
(2)  the  real  that  sensation  is,  or  presents,  the  real.  The  outward  matter 
m  eeiing.  ^  ^^^  ^^^^^  ^^^  though  the  co-operation  of  the  organism, 
being  occasioned  by  its  action,  may  not  interfere  with  the 
derived  reality  of  sensation  or  perception,  it  clearly  does 
prevent  sensation  from  being  like  the  real.  There  is  no 
resemblance  between  a  sensation  of  light  and  those  external 
vibrations  stimulatory  of  the  optic  nerve  which,  according 
to  Mr.  Lewes'  rationale  of  the  distinction  between  percep- 
tion and  hallucination,  should  be  the  real  presented  in  this 
sensation.  Yet  we  find  him — in  passage  (b) — expressly  reject- 
ing the  doctrine  of  there  being  an  unlikeness  between  the 
perceived  and  the  real  object  on  the  ground  that  *  perception, 
because  it  is  a  resultant,  does  not  alter  the  real.'  ^An 
object  is  t<o  us  only  what  we  feel  it  to  be.'  *  Existing  for  us 
only  in  feeling,  its  reality  is  what  we  feel.'  Now  to  say  that 
perception  does  not  alter  the  real,  according  to  that  doctrine 
of  the  real  which  we  have  been  so  far  examining,  can  mean 
no  more  than  that  the  joint  effect  of  two  co-operant  agents 
does  not  alter  either  of  them.  Of  course  it  does  not,  but 
one  of  the  agents,  as  reacted  upon  by  the  other,  is  different 
Scorn  what  it  is  by  itself.  The  question,  as  between  Mr. 
Lewes  and  the  'transfigured  realism'  of  Helmholtz  and 
Spencer,  is  whether  the  joint  effect  of  ihe  external  and 


MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM;  403 

internal  factors  is  not  necessarily  nnlike  either  of  them,  and 
whether,  the  external  being  the  real,  it  does  not  follow  that 
sensation  is  nnlike  reality.  It  is  a  question  to  which  there 
can  be  but  one  answer,  and ,  Mr.  Lewes  only  avoids  this 
answer  by  yirtnally  giving  up  the  identification  of  the  real 
with  the  external,  and  substituting  for  it  the  view  that 
feeling,  as  such,  is  the  real,  which  again  tacitly  passes  into 
the  wholly  different  view  that  it  is  the  uniform  relations  of 
feelings  which  are  so. 

114.  When  it  is  said  that,  ^  the  object  existing  for  us  only  Which 
in  feeling,  its  reality  is  what  we  feel,*  the  statement  must  *ffJ^°t'^J 
strictly  mean  that  the  real  is  any  feeling  as  felt,  and  nothing  there  is  no 
else.     Any  question  as  to  the  relation  of  feeling  to  the  real  ^  *^  *^J 
object  which  it  presents  to  us  is  set  aside  by  the  admission  it^ani- 
that  this  object  is  simply  the  feeling  itself,  and  Mr.  Lewes  *?™*  "^*" 
is  ignoring  the  effect  of  his  own  statement  when  he  still  goes  feeling. 
on  to  plead  for  the  likeness  of  sensation  to  the  real  on  the 
ground  that  being  its  resultant  it  does  not  alter  it.    He  does 
not  seem  to  see  that,  upon  the  view  just  stated,  the  question 
is  no  longer  whether  feeling  truly  presents  to  us  an  external 
real,  but  whether,  the  real  being  feeling  as  felt,  anything  so 
different  from  feeling  as,  for  instance,  those  vibrations  of 
ether  which  are  the  so-called  external  factors  of  the  sensa- 
tion of  light,  can  be  real  at  all.     The  truth  is  that  while 
using  words  which  properly  imply  the  reduction  of  the  real 
to  feeling  as  felt,  what  he  has  in  his  mind  when  he  so  writes 
is  in  fact  not  feeling  as  felt,  but  feeling  as  determined  by 
relations  of  which  the  consciousness  cannot  be  an  event  in 
the  way  of  feeling.     Behind  the  judgment  conveyed  by  the 
words,  *  the  object  exists  for  us  only  in  feeling,*  there  always 
lies  the  other  judgment,  *  feeling  is  the  mode  in  which  an 
object  exists  for  us.'    Perhaps  Mr.  Lewes,  or  the  reader  on 
his  behalf,  will  say  that  he  does  not  see  the  difference 
between  the  two  views ;  but  this  can  only  be  because  each 
has  been  so  confused  with  the  other  that  neither  is  appre- 
hended in  its  full   significance.     To  say  that  ^the  object 
exists  for  us  only  in  feeling,'  if  it  means  anything,  means 
that  for  us  there  is  no  object  at  all.   To  reduce  the  existence 
of  the  object  to  its  existence  in  feeling  is  to  reduce  it  to 
an  occurrence  of  feeling.    There  will  be  as  many  objects  as 
there  are  occurrences  of  feeling  without  any  unity  to  or  in 
which  they  are  related, — without  any  object   constituting 


494  MIL  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM,* 

them  or  which  they  represent, — since  snch  unity  or  object 
would  not  be- a  feeling.     On  the  other  hand,  to  say  that 

*  feeling  is  the  nxode  in  which  an  object  exists  for  us '  is  to 
say  that  feelixigin  its  reality  ,is  other  than  what  it  is  simply 
as  felt,  or  as  a  feeling  that  occurs  to  us  and  is  gone.  It 
means  that  for  our  consciousness  there  is  an  object  which 
feeling,  as  such,  is  not,  and  that  as  determined  by  our  con- 
sciousness feeling. becomes  a  relation  of  this  object  to  us — is 
referred  to  it  as  the  conditioned  to  its  conditions.  It  is 
because  the  statement  that  *  the  object  exists  for  us  only  in 
feeling '  is  in  fact  translated  into  this  converse  proposition, 

*  feeling  is  the  mode  in  which  an  object  exists  for  us,'  that  the 
further  statement,  '  the  reality  of  the  object  is  what  we  feel,' 
comes  to  mean,  not  that  the  reality  is  feeling,  but  that  the 
reality  is  the  relation  of  certain  factors  which  conditionf  eeling. 

He  himself  115.  It  is  at  this  interpretation  of  'reality'  that  Mr. 
that  the  Lewes  himself  almost  explicitly  arrives  when  he  explains  the 
real  b not  assertion  that/  b,  thing  is  real '  to  mean  that ' it  will  always 
ntl^moh,  ^  ^^^^  ^^  ®^^^  Irelations  have  such  or  such  modes  of  ex- 
butasde-  istence,  and  in  all  similar  relations  similar  modes.' ^  Now 
^'^jj^  what  is  the  'thing'  here  spoken  ofP  According  to  the 
tion.  context  it  would  seem  to  mean  the  external  factor  of  a 

sensation,  of  which,  in  saying  that  it  is  real,  we  assert  that 
its  '  mode  of  existence '  in  relation  to  a  similar  organism  will 
always  be  similar,  i.e.  will  always  yield  a  like  feeling.     We 
cannot  indeed  admit  this  interpretation  of  '  thing '  in  the 
statement  that  the 'thing  is  real;  but  if  this  is  the  doctrine 
which  Mr.  Lewes  means  here  to  convey,  it  is  clear  that 
according  to  it  the  real  is  not  the  external  factor,  but  a 
mode  of  existence  of  it  as  determined  by  relation  to  some- 
thing else.    It  may  be  said  with  truth  that  the  external 
factor  is  inseparable  from  its  '  mode  of  existence,'  but  the 
corollary  of  this  will  be,  not  that  the  external  factor  is  real, 
but  that  in  itself  it  is  an  unreal  abstraction,  the   reality 
being  its  existence  as  determined  by  relation — a  reality  which 
may  with  equal  correctniess  be  ascribed  as  a  mode  of  existence 
to  the  *  internal  factor '  as  determined  by  relation. 
In  truth  it       116.  In  fact,  however,  when  we  say  that  *a  thing  is  real,' 
Uiintttodo  '^®  ^^  ^^^  mean  to  say  anything  about  the  e?:temal  factor 
with  ex-     of  a  sensation.    When  I  judge  Hhis  light  is  real,'  it  is  to 
ternaiity,    ^j^^^.  Qf-^i^QJ^  J  am  conscious  as  light  that  I  ascribe  i-eality, 

*  Passage  (b)  above. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    405 

and  that  of  which  I  am  so  conscious  is  certainly  not  a  vibrsr  but  with 
tion  of  ether  in  contact  with  the  optic  nerve..  The  import  i^^'jr**' 
of  the  proposition  is  that  the  relations  bj  which  a  certain  feeliog. 
feeling  is  determined  in  mj  conscionsness  when  I  am 
conscious  of  it  as  light — relations  implied  in  the  use  of  the 
term  *  light' — are  those  by  which  it  is  in  fact  determined. 
If  I  have  been  duly  instructed  as  to  the  latter,  the  proposi- 
tion no  doubt  implies  that  tlie  feeling  is  judged  to  be  the 
joint  result  of  a  particular  vibration  and  of  nervous  reaction ; 
but  all  that  can  be  said  of  it  generally,  as  cotnmon  alike  to 
the  scientific  and  the  unscientific,  is  that  it  implies  the  con- 
ception of  reality  as  constituted  by  some  relations  or  other, 
which  are  permanent  and  uniform,  or  always  the  same 
between  the  same  ^  things/  Macbeth,  in  the  famous  scene, 
belieyes  the  reality  of  a  dagger  to  consist  in  certain  relations 
in  which  an  object  stands  at  once  to  the  senses  of  sight  and 
touch,  the  object  being  the  unity  of  those  relations.  At  first 
a  certain  visual  feeling  is  interpreted  in  his  consciousness  as 
an  object  determined  by  these  relations,  and  is  hence  called, 
though  doubtingly,  a  dagger.  Finding  that  it  is  not '  sen- 
sible to  feeling  as  to  sight ' — that  one  of  the  relations  which 
he  considers  necessary  to  the  reality  of  a  dagger  is  absent — 
he  decides  that  what  he  has  taken  for  a.dagger  is  not  really 
so.  It  is  '  a  dagger  of  the  mind,  a  false  creation.'  It  has  a 
reality  of  its  own,  only  not  the  reality  of  a  dagger.  Its 
*  falseness '  lies,  not  in  itself,  but  in  the  ascription  to  it  of  a 
reality  other  than  its  own.  The  fact  that  the  visual  feeling 
was  excited  by  *  internal  *  or  *  subjective '  stimuli  did  not 
render  it  unreal.  On  the  contrary,  in  this  consisted  its 
particular  reality.*  If  a  feeling  so  excited,  and  interpreted 
as  so  excited — not  wrongly  referred  to  an  external  stimulus 
-^is  yet  to  be  called  an  hallucination,  we  can  only  say  that 
in  hallucination  there  need  be  no  unreality.  The  unreality 
only  belongs  to  the  object  which  intellectual  consciousness 
interprets  the  feeling  to  be,  and  which  in  fact  it  is  not.  If 
a  feeling,  which  is  in  fact  a  product  of  external  stimulus,  is 
interpreted  as  a  creation  of  the  mind,  there  is  just  as  much 
unreality  about  the  object  which  this  interpretation  cout 
fltitutes  as  there  is  about  that  which  results  from  the  inter- 
pretation  of  a  feeling  excited  from  within  as  due  to  the 
action  of  external  matter.     If  we  are  only  to  call  that  an 

'  See  Problems  qf  Life  and  Mind,  toL  ii.  p.  46. 


406  3iR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM/ 

hallucination  which  is  nnreal,  we  mnst  apply  the  term,  not 
as  Mr.  Lewes  does,  to  a  feeling  which  has  the  strong^  of 
one  excited  from  outside  without  directly  being  so,  but  to 
the  object  which  arises  for  consciousness,  out  of  the  belief 
that  this  feeling  is  related  in  a  certain  manner  in  which  a 
feeling  of  that  strength  commonly  is  related,  but  in  which 
this  happens  not  to  be.  We  must  understand  it,  in  short, 
in  a  sense  in  which  it  would  be  applicable  to  Macbeth's 
state  of  mind  before  he  has  tried  the  experiment  of  clutch- 
ing the  dagger,  not  to  his  state  after  he  has  done  so;  though 
in  the  latter  state  the  Tisual  feeling  may  retain  all  that 
^energy  of  a  sensation  objectively  excited'  which  it  possessed 
in  the  former. 
Ztf.  itis  117.  The  conclusion  to  which  we  are  brought  by  an  ex- 

no*t  M '  amination  of  passage  (b)  is  confirmed  by  other  words  of  Mr. 
such,  but  Lewes,  where  he  himself  makes  use  of  the  illustration  from 
eff^'*?^  the  scene  in  Macbeth.  *  Between  the  reality  of  our  waking 
something  scnsations  and  the  phantasmality  of  our  dream  perceptions 
not  felt.  — between  the  dagger  which  Macbeth  drew,  and  the  dagger 
which  proceeded  from  his  "  heat-oppressed  brain  *' — between 
the  fruit  lying  on  the  table,  and  its  reflected  image  on  the 
surface  of  a  mirror — between  the  serpent  I  dissected  yester- 
day, and  the  dragon  which  terrified  my  ancestors,  the  con- 
trast is  marked.  But  what  is  it  in  all  these  and  other  cases 
which  distinguishes  the  real  from  the  unreal?  Not  the 
feeling  as  such.  That  is  real  in  both.  The  fruit-image  is 
a  real  image,  but  not  a  real  fruit-object.  The  yision  of  the 
dragon,  and  the  terror  it  excited,  were  real  feelings,  and 
played  a  part  in  the  experience  of  our  forefathers  in  some 
respects  more  important  than  any  of  the  feelings  excited  in 
me  by  my  dissected  serpent.*  *  This  passage  is  very  instruc- 
tive as  exhibiting  the  transition  from  the  view  which  identi- 
fies the  real  with  the  external  factor  of  sensation  to  that 
which  reduces  it  to  simple  feeling,  and  through  that  view  to 
its  identification  with  the  relations  which  determine  feeling* 
The  ascription  of  reality  to  the.* feeling  as  such,*  which 
Macbeth  experiences  when  he  asks,  *  Is  this  a  dagger  ?  *  is 
clearly  inconsistent  with  the  account  given  of  the  real  as 
opposed  to  the  *  ideal,'  in  passage  (a).^  It  has  not,  according 
to  the  sense  in  which  Mr.  Lewes  uses  the  terms, '  objective 

"  PrMemB  of  Life  and  Miud^  vol.  ii.  p.  46. 
•Above,  §111. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCUL  MEDIUM/  497 

reality  for  ita  antecedent  stimulus.*  It  is  not  excited  from 
without  in  the  way  in  which  sensations  ordinarily  are  so, 
and  thus  is  not  determined  in  the  particular  way  which, 
according  to  the  doctrine  of  that  passage,  renders  a  feeling 
presentative  of  the  real,  and  thus  derivatively  real  itself. 
Tet  it  appears  that  it  is  real,  and,  as  Mr.  Lewes'  words 
('the  feeling  as  such  is  real'),  taken  strictly,  imply,  real 
apart  from  determination  by,  or  relation  to,  anything  but 
itself.  Another  illustration  which  he  uses,  however — that 
of  the  *  fruit-image' — shows  that  when  he  speaks  of  *  feeling 
as  such '  he  is  not  using  the  words  in  the  sense  which  they 
properly  bear,  but  is  thinking  of  feeling  as  representing  or 
caused  by  something  else.  With  what  sense,  we  naturally 
ask,  can  the  image  of  fruit  in  a  mirror  be  called  a  feeling  as 
such,  or  why,  because  'the  fruit-image  is  a  real  image,' 
should  any  feeling  as  such  be  real?  The  fruit-image  is, no 
more  a  feeling  as  such  than  the  '  fruit-object.'  It  is  an 
object  in  precisely  the  same  sense  in  which  the  fruit  itself  is 
80,  though  not  the  same  object.  The  sensations  incidental 
to  the  perception  of  the  one  are  just  as  much  the  effect  of 
external  stimulus  as  those  incidental  to  the  perception  of 
the  other.  Clearly,  then,  there  is  no  correspondence  between 
the  '  feeling  as  such,'  which  prompts  Macbeth's  question,  as 
distinct  from  the  '  dagger  which  he  drew,'  and  the  image  of 
fruit  in  the  mirror  as  distinct  from  the  fruit  itself  ou  the 
table.  If  there  is  to  be  any  parallel  between  the  image  and 
the  feeling,  the  latter  must  be  supposed  to  be  related  to 
something  which  is  not  the  feeling  as  the  image  to  some* 
thing  which  is  not  the  image.  '  The  fruit-image  is  a  real 
image,'  in  the  sense  that  it  stands  in  a  certain  relation  to 
the  eatable  fruit  on  the  table,  and  if  there  is  to  be  sense  in 
the  statement  that  the  apparition  to  Macbeth  or  the  vision 
of  the  dragon  were  in  like  manner  '  real  feelings,'  it  must 
mean  that  they,  too,  stood  in  definite  relations  to  something 
else.  If  feeling  as  such  is  real,  there  is  no  point  in  the 
qualification  of  feelings  by  the  adjective  real.  Mr.  Lewes 
himself,  having  said  that  the  vision  of  the  dragon  was  a  real 
feeling,  adds  epexegetically,  '  and  played  a  part  in  the  expe- 
rience of  our  forefathers.'  He  is  for  the  time  thinking  of  it 
as  real  in  virtue  of  its  effects,  just  as  in  another  connection 
he  would  think  of  it  as  real  in  virtue  of  its  cause — real  as 
the  product  of  certain  processes  in  the  ^psychological'  or 
VOL.  I.  K  K 


498  MB.  LEWES'  ACfCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCL\L  MEDIUM.' 


Why, 

neverth»- 
le«8,  'com- 
mon sense' 
identifieB 
the  real 
with  the 
ezternaL 


*  social  media.*  Either  way — whether  it  is  in  virtue  of  its 
cause  or  of  its  effects  that  it  is  real — it  is  not  the  feeling  as 
stuih  that  is  so,  bnt  the  feeling  as  qualified  by  relations  which 
are  not  feelings  or  felt. 

118.  Whatever  we  may  make,  then,  of  Mr.  Lewes'  *  state- 
ment at  the  end  of  passage  (b) — whether  we  take  it  to  mean 
that  the  reality  of  the  ^  external  factor '  of  a  sensation  lies  in 
its  mode  of  existence  as  determined  by  relations,  or  that  the 
reality  of  a  '  thing/  as  an  object  of  consciousness,  consists  in 
its  being  an  interpretation  of  a  feeling  as  determined  by 
relations  by  which  it  is  in  fact  determined — it  at  any  rate 
expresses  a  view  of  the  real  as  constituted  by  relations,  which 
conflicts  equally  with  the  view  that  it  is  feeling  or  given  in 
feeling,  and  with  the  view  that  it  is  the  external.  In  what 
feeling  are  these  relations  presented?  To  what  are  they 
external  9  Of  the  two  Actors  in  a  relation  of  externality 
each  is  external  to  the  other,  but  the  relation  is  not  external 
to  either  or  to  anything  else.  Locke,  in  a  well-known  pas- 
sage, remarks  that  it  is  as  insignificant  to  ask  whether  a 
man's  will  be  free  as  whether  his  sleep  be  swiffc  or  his  virtue 
square.  We  might  employ  the  same  examples  to  illustrate 
the  impropriety  of  calling  relations,  or  a  reality  which  con- 
sists of  relations,  external.  One  cannot  deny  that  they  are 
external,  any  more  than  that  virtue  is  square,  because  the 
assertion  that  they  are  so  is  simply  unmeaning.  Yet  *  com- 
mon-sense,' it  must  be  admitted,  clings  hard  to  the  identifi- 
cation of  the  real  with  the  external.  It  does  so  because, 
being  rightly  persuaded  that  real  things  are  other  than  any 
feelings  of  ours  or  any  judgments  we  may  form  about  them, 
it  goes  on  to  mistranslate  this  otherness  into  externality. 
The  mistranslation  maybe  described  summarily  as  resulting 
from  a  double  mistake.  The  'objects,'  of  which  each  is 
really  a  group  of  relations,  having  no  separate  existence 
except  so  far  as  our  consciousness  has  come  habitually  to 
distinguish  that  group  from  others,  and  has  marked  the  dis- 
tinction by  a  common  name,  are  treated  as  things  in  space; 
and  then  the  relation  of  space — ^a  relation  which  has  no  real 
existence  either  as  between  one  group  of  relations  and 
another,  or  as  between  objects  consisting  of  such  groups  and 
consciousness — is  supposed  to  obtain  between  the  things  and 
a  mind  on  which  they  act. 

>  Above,  §  nu 


MR  LEWES'   A.CCOUNT  OF  MIE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM;  499 

119.  When  analysis  has  reached  the  point  of  resolving  Mr.  Lewes 
the  reality  of  things  into  relations,  it  has  in  effect  superseded  !^ew°aiong 
the  notion  that  real  things  are  things  in  space  or  external ;  ^th  a 
when  it  has  admitted  that  the  relation  of  external  and  ^fch^°** 
internal  is  one  between  two  factors  necessary  to  constitute  logically 
an  object  of  sense,  it  has  logically  discarded  the  notion  of  ^^  ^^^^ 
this  relation  as  one  between  the  object  and  consciousness. 
In  Mr.  Lewes,  however,  we  find  the  new  cloth  patching  the 
old  garment,  without  any  recognition  of  their  discrepancy. 
The  real  is  made  to  consist  in  relations,  yet  it  is  still  regarded 
as  external,  and  as  given  in  feeling,  because  feeling  is  an 
effect  of  the  external.  It  is  not  explained  how  a  feeling, 
because  the  effect  of  a  stimulation  of  the  organism  from  with- 
out, should  at  the  same  time  be  the  consciousness  of  a  reality 
consisting  in  the  relation  between  the  organism  and  its 
stimulant — how  a  sensation  of  light  should  at  the  same  time 
be  a  consciousness  of  the  action  and  reaction  of  undulatory 
yibrations  and  the  optic  nerve.  The  old  notion  of  feeling  as 
an  impression  which  the  mind  takes  from  an  external  real, 
like  the  stamp  which  wax  takes  from  the  seal,  and  thus  as  a 
conveyance  in  some  sort  of  the  outward  object  into  conscious- 
ness, still  survives  in  him.  He  apparently  does  not  ask  him- 
self how,  if  the  real  object  is  not  the  external  matter,  but  a 
relation  between  this  and  the  organism,  it  can  any  longer 
make  an  impression  on  a  consciousness  which  is  identified 
with  one  of  the  factors  of  the  relation.  He  demurs  to  the 
view  that  the  real  is  '  transfigured '  by  consciousness,  without 
rejecting  the  notion  that  the  real  is  the  acting  matter  and 
consciousness  the  reacting  organism,  from  which  it  necessarily 
follows.  He  never  meets  it  on  the  true  gpx)und,  which  it 
might  have  been  hoped  that  his  better  thoughts  about  the 
real  would  have  suggested — on  the  ground,  namely,  that  the 
relation  between  the  external  stimulus  and  the  sentient  re- 
sponse is  quite  another  thing  than  that  between  the  real  and 
our  consciousness  of  it,  and  that  a  real  which  consists  in  the 
relations  determinant  of  a  feeling,  or  in  a  feeling  as  deter- 
mined by  relations,  undergoes  no  transfiguration  by  a  subject 
conscious  of  the  relations.  If  once  the  real  is  thus  under- 
stood, the  notion  of  it  as  something  outside  conscious- 
ness, which  transfers  itself  into  consciousness  by  an  effect 
produced  on  a  sentient  organism,  has  logically  disappeared, 
and  with  it  the  difficulty  about  the  transfiguration  which  the 

X  K  2 


600  MR.  LEWES'  AC(X)UNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

real  mast  undergo  in  the  process  of  transfer.  Belations 
exist  only  for  a  conscious  subject.  A  world  which  is  a  sys- 
tem of  relations  implies  a  unit,  self-distinguished  from  all 
the  things  related,  jet  determining  all  as  the  equal  presence 
through  relation  to  which  thej  are  related  to  each  other ; 
and  such  a  unit  is  a  conscious  subject.  Consciousness,  then, 
being  in  this  sense  a  condition  of  the  existence  of  the  real, 
though  it  does  not  follow  that  the  relations,  by  which  a  feel- 
ing is  determined  in  our  consciousness  when  we  present  it 
to  ourselves  as  real,  are  those  by  which  it  is  really  deter- 
mined, it  does  follow  that  the  difference  between  the  real  as 
it  is  and  the  real  as  we  take  it  to  be  is  not  a  difference 
between  what  is  in  consciousness  and  what  is  not  so  The 
relations  which  form  the  real  fact  are  relations  for  a  conscious- 
ness, but  for  one  which  is  only  pai*tially  and  interruptedly 
ours.  If  it  were  not  ours  at  all,  there  could  for  us  be  no  such 
thing  as  reality.  Because  it  is  but  inchoate  in  us,  the  rela- 
tions by  which  a  feeling  is  determined  in  our  interpretation 
of  it  are  never  more  than  a  fragment  of  those  under  which 
it  exists  for  the  complete  or  eternal  consciousness,  and  a 
fragment  which  in  the  effort  after  its  extension  is  constantly 
becoming  confused. 
Effect  on  120.  It  is  to  the  untenable  compromise  which  Mr.  Lewes 
orp«rcep^^  allows  himself  to  maintain  between  a  true  and  a  false  view 
rion.  of  the  real  that  we  trace  the  errors,  as  we  venture  to  think 

reacti^'  ^^®™>  ^^  ^^^  account  of  perception  and  its  distinction  from 
c*  feeling  Conception.  The  view  of  the  real  as  a  system  of  relations 
an  obJ«^ ,  has  established  itself  in  his  mind  without  dislodging  the  old 
view  that  the  real  is  external  matter,  of  which  feeling  is  at 
once  the  effect  and  the  presentation  to  consciousness.  The 
consequence  of  their  juxtaposition  is  the  assumption  that 
feeling,  since  it  is  the  presentation  of  the  real,  and  since  the 
real  consists  in  relations,  is  a  consciousness  of  relations.  It 
is  not  asked  how  an  event  of  neural  tremor  can  be  a  con- 
sciousness of  relation  between  itself  and  other  such  events 
or  between  itself  and  an  external  vibration.  It  is  taken  for 
granted  that  it  is  so,  because  otherwise  it  would  not  be  a  pre- 
sentation of  the  real,  and  the  actual  impossibility  of  its  being 
so  (which  we  have  previously  pointed  out) "  is  disguised  by 
an  equivocal  phrase.  The  neural  reaction,  which  is  an  effect 
of  external  stimulus,  is  said  to  be  a  feeling  of  the  world. 

'  Above,  §§76  and  the  following. 


doDsf 


UEL  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.     601 

Advantage  is  thus  nnintentionally  taken  of  a  phrase,  which 
may  meaa  either  a  feeling  caused  by  something  in  the  world 
or  a  consciousness  having  something  in  the  world  for  its 
object,  to  make  the  sentient  effect  of  material  vibrations 
appear  as  the  consciousness  of  an  objective  world  to  which 
these  vibrations  belong, 

121.  But  even  could  this  equivocation  pass  muster,  Mr.  Why,  then 
Lewes*  realism  would  still  scarcely  run  on  all  fours,  for  the  idertifv 
object  of  which  we  are  conscious  in  *  feeling  the  world  *  is  '*^6  o^i«ft 
not  the  stimulant  of  the  sentient  organism,  as  it  should  be  the  excit- 
if  the  relation  of  sensation  to  its  exciting  cause  is  to  be  |?8  v»J>ra- 
identified  with  that  of  consciousness  to  its  object.  Put, 
indeed,  in  the  definite  form  that  the  sensation  of  light,  for 
instance,  is  a  consciousness  of  that  relation  between  nerve 
and  vibration  which  constitutes  it,  the  doctrine  would 
scarcely  be  plausible.  It  is  only  in  the  vaguer  form,  that 
sensation  is  a  consciousness  of  some  external  object  as  its 
cause,  that  it  finds  such  ready  acceptance.  Yet  if  we  are  to 
suppose  that  sensation,  because  the  eftiect  of  an  external  real, 
is  at  the  same  time  the  consciousness  of  it,  it  is  intrinsically 
more  rational  to  suppose  that  it  is  a  consciousness  of  such  a 
real  in  its  reality  than  of  a  substitute  for  it  in  the  shape  of 
an  object  which  our  psychologists  are  quite  ready  on  occasion 
to  pronounce  a  ^fictitious  entity.'  If  we  admit  that  the 
senses,  as  such  {i.e.  as  apart  from  determination  by  thought), 
tell  anything,  it  should  be  the  truth  that  they  tell.  If  a 
certain  sensation  of  colour,  which  I  experience  in  looking  at 
what  I  call  this  flower,  is  to  be  reckoned  a  consciousness  of 
an  external  real,  on  the  ground  that  the  neural  tremors  in 
which  it  consists  are  an  efl^ect  of  impact  from  without,  the 
object,  of  which  I  am  conscious  in  the  consciousness  which 
is  held  to  be  the  same  as  the  sensation,  should  be  the  ex- 
citing vibrations,  not  such  an  object  as  that  which  I  call  this 
flower — an  object  which  the  psychologists  reduce  for  us  to 
a  bundle  of  possibilities  of  sensation,  having,  as  such  a 
bundle,  no  power  to  excite  nervous  reaction,  and  therefore 
no  reality.  We  may  assert  as  stoutly  as  we  like  that  when 
we  speak  of  feeling  as  presenting  the  real  we  mean  by  feel- 
ing neural  excitement,  by  the  real  its  exciting  cause,  and  by 
the  presentation  the  relation  between  them ;  but  it  is  in  fact 
only  because  we  have  quite  a  different  relation  in  view  that 
we  acquiesce  in  the  notion  of  presentation  or  feeling  of  some- 


502  MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

thing  80  absolately  different  from  the  exciting  cause  of 
sensation  as  ^sensible  objects'  are.    The  presentation  of 
which  we  are  in  truth  thinking,  when  we  so  speak,  is  not  a 
presentation  to  sense  or  to  a  sentient  organism,  but  to  a 
consciousness  which  must  be  other  than  feeling,  and  for 
which  feeling  must  be  other  than  the  real,  in  order  that 
feeling  may  present  the  real  to  it — a  consciousness  which  at 
once  distinguishes  the  feeling  from  itself,  and  g^ves  it  a  per- 
manence that  does  not  belong  to  it  as  feeling,  in  regarding 
it  as  a  fact  related  to  other  facts,  and  thus  as  presenting  the 
real.     Such  a  consciousness  of  fiict  being  what  we  really 
mean  by  ^feeling  the  world,'  even  when  we  say  that  we  take 
it  to  mean  a  stimulation  of  nerves  by  external  matter,  we 
do  not  stumble,  as  we  otherwise  should  do,  at  the  necessary 
admission  that  the  cause  of  neural  excitement  is  never 
the  object  of  which  we  are  conscious  in  so  feeling.  • 
is  thaThia       l^^.  When  we  look  to  the  passages  in  which  Mr.  Lewes 
*percep-      states  the  nature  of  perception,  we  find  its  essential  differ- 
flomethinff   ^^^®  "^^  Sentient  response  forcing  itself  to  the  surfiEice  in 
ouite  other  spite  of  the  doctriuo  which  identifies  them.     As  specimens, 
^*°^'*'  we  adduce  the  following:  (a)  *I  regard  perception  as  the 
tion.'  assimilation  of  the  object  by  the  subject,  in  the  same  way 

that  nutrition  is  the  assimilation  of  the  medium  by  the 
organism.  Out  of  the  general  web  of  existence  certain 
threads  may  be  detached  and  rewoven  into  a  special  group 
— the  subject — and  this  sentient  group  will  in  so  &r  be 
different  &om  the  larger  group— the  object;  but  whatever 
different  arrangements  the  threads  may  take  on,  they  are 
always  threads  of  the  original  web,  they  are  not  different 
threads.  The  elements  of  the  sentient  organism  are  the 
threads  detached  from  the  larger  group;  the  motions  of 
the  sentient  organism  are  the  motions  of  these  elements' 
(vol.  i.  p.  189). 

(6)  '  Conceptions  are  not  perceptions  but  symbols ;  they 
are  not  the  sensations  themselves  in  a  synthesis,  but  general 
signs  indicating  such  synthesis ;  as  algebraic  letters  are  not 
the  numbers  and  magnitudes  themselves,  but  symbols  of 
their  relations^  This  which  is  obvious  enough  in  the  case 
of  general  conceptions — ^life,  cause,  nation,  virtue,  Ac. — ^is 
perhaps  less  obvious  yet  equally  demonstrable  in  the  case  of 
less  general  conceptions — flower,  horse,  river,  Ac, — ^which 
are  markedly  distinguishable  from  the  perceptions  of  a 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  603 

flower,  a  horse,  or  a  river,  which  are  always  syntheses  of 
feeling,  and  are  real  because  both  the  elements  (the  sensa* 
tions)  and  the  synthesis  are  the  actual  and  direct  products 
of  the  external  and  internal  factors '  (vol.  i.  p.  191).  ^  Our 
perception  of  an  animal,  or  a  flower,  is  the  synthesis  of  all 
the  sensations  we  have  had  of  the  object  in  relation  to  our 
several  senses ;  and  it  is  always  an  individual  object  repre« 
sented  by  an  individual  idea :  it  is  thds  animal,  or  thie  flower. 
But  our  conception  of  an  animal  or  flower  is  always  a 
general  idea,  not  only  embracing  all  that  is  known  or 
thought  of  the  class  in  all  its  relations,  but  abstracted  from 
all  individual  characteristics,  and  is  not  this  animal  or  this 
flower,  but  any  one  of  the  class ;  just  as  a  and  b  in  algebra 
are  not  quantities  and  magnitudes,  but  their  symbols.  Per^ 
ceptions  are  concerned  directly  with  the  terms  of  feeling; 
conceptions  with  the  relatione  of  those  terms '  (vol.  u  p.  136), 

(c)  *  The  feeling  originally  due  to  the  objective  presence 
of  the  stimulus  may  be  revived  in  the  objective  absence  of 
that  stimulus  by  the  excitation  of  the  neural  process 
through  one  or  more  of  the  feelings  associated  with  it. 
The  object  is  a  group  of  sensibles;  any  one  of  these  is 
capable  of  reviving  the  feeling  of  the  others.  Inference 
thus  lies  at  the  very  root  of  mental  life,  for  the  very  combi- 
nation of  present  feelings  with  past  feelings,  and  the  conse- 
quent inference  that  what  was  formerly  felt  in  conjunction 
with  one  group  of  feelings  will  again  be  felt  if  the  condi- 
tions are  reinstated— that  the  sweetness  and  fragrance 
formerly  experienced  in  conjunction  with  the  colour  and 
form  of  the  apple  are  again  to  be  revived  when  the  organs 
of  taste  and  smell  are  brought  into  relation  with  this 
coloured  object— this  act  of  inference  is  necessary  to  the 
perception  of  the  object  '^  apple,''  and  is  like  in  kind  to  all 
other  judgments.  Inference  is  '^  seeing  with  the  mind's 
eye,"  reinstating  what  has  been,  but  now  is  not,  present  to 
sense. 

<  Ck>nsciousness  is  admitted  to  be  the  only  ground  of  certi- 
tude. All  sensation  is  certain,  indisputable.  The  test  and 
measure  of  certitude  is  therefore  in  sensation.  To  have  a 
feeling  is  to  be  incapable  of  doubting  it.  The  only  possible 
opening  for  doubt  is  not  respecting  the  feeling  itself,  but 
respecting  some  inference  connected  with  it.  When  I  say 
<^  I  see  an  apple  there,"  I  express  an  indisputable  fact  of 


604  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.* 

feeling  in  terniR  which  imply  disputable  inferences*  The 
fact  is  that  I  am  affected  now  in  a  way  similar  to  that  in 
which  I  was  formerly  affected  when  certein  coloured  shapes 
excited  my  retina ;  and  this  affection  reinstates  the  feelings 
which  accompanied  it  on  those  occasions  ;  the  whole  group 
of  feelings  being  named  apple,  I  say  '^  there  is  an  apple/' 
The  inference  may  be  erroneous ;  on  proceeding  to  verify  it 
by  reducing  it  to  sensible  experiences  I  find  that  the 
coloured  object  is  not  an  apple,  i.e.  has  not  the  taste,  fra- 
grance, Ac.  which  are  elements  in  that  complex  perception ; 
the  colour  and  form  which  led  to  the  inference  are  found  to 
belong  to  a  marble  or  wooden  body ;  or  to  some  other  fruit 
resembling  the  apple  in  some  respects,  differing  in  others. 
...  If  perception  is  mental  vision,  in  which  the  unapparent 
sensibles  are  rendered  apparent — if  it  is  an  act  of  judgment 
involving  the  assumption  of  homogeneity  which  everywhere 
underlies  judgment — and  if  there  is  even  here  need  of  veri- 
fication, this  is  obviously  still  more  urgent  in  ratiocination, 
i,e,  that  process  of  mental  vision  in  which  ideas  are  rein- 
stated in  their  sensible  series,  and  the  relations  of  things 
are  substituted  for  the  things  themselves.  A  chain  of  rea- 
soning, however  involved,  is  nothing  but  a  series  of  infer- 
ences, i.e.  ideal  presentations  of  objects  not  actually  present 
to  sense.  Could  we  realise  all  the  links  in  this  chain,  by 
reducing  conceptions  to  perceptions,  and  perceptions  to 
sensibles — and  this  would  be  effected  by  placing  the  corre- 
sponding objects  in  their  actual  order  as  a  sensible  series — 
our  most  abstract  reasoning  would  cease  to  be  anything  but 
a  succession  of  sensations  '  (vol.  L  pp.  256-8). 
View  (I)  123.  In  passage  (a)  above,  if  we  read  it  as  it  stands  with- 
cepi^ion-  ^^*  a^PP^yiiig  ^  its  interpretation  any  presuppositions  as  to 
assimiia-  the  nature  of  perception,  by  the  '  subject*  we  shall  under- 
^tct  fh^  stand  the  sentient  organism,  by  the  *  object  *  the  physical 
fiical  eo-  uui  versc  of  which  this  organism  is  a  part,  or  so  much  of  it  as 
Twronment)  admits  of  direct  relation  to  the  organism.  Thus  the  *  sub- 
(Bentient  jcct'  spoken  of  in  the  first  clause  of  the  first  sentenoe  will 
organism).  qqIj  diflfer  from  the  *  organism  *  of  the  second  clause  as  the 
sentient  differs  from  the  merely  vital ;  nor  will  the  '  object  * 
of  the  first  clause  be  at  all  distingnishable  from  the '  medium ' 
of  the  second.  It  is  true,  of  course,  that  only  certain  ele- 
ments of  the  physical  universe  are  susceptible  of  assimi- 
lation by  the  vital  organism,  and  only  these  are  called  its 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  506 

*  medium ' ;  but  in  like  manner  it  is  only  certain  elements  of 
it  that  are  susceptible  of  assimilation  by  the  sentient  organ- 
ism. The  'object*  in  the  first  clause  will  be  such  physical 
elements  as  admit  of  being  '  assimilated '  by  the  organism  as 
sentient;  the  'medium'  in  the  second  will  be  such  as  admit 
of  being  assimilated  by  the  organism  as  vital.  As  nutrition 
is  a  process  in  which  the  organism,  reacting  upon  its  medium, 
converts  it  into  material  of  the  organism,  so  (if  the  parallel 
is  to  hold  good)  we  are  to  suppose  that  in  '  perception '  the 
sentient  organism,  reacting  upon  certain  elements  and 
motions  of  the  physical  universe,  converts  them  into  such 
elements  and  motions  as  are  involved  in  its  own  existence 
and  action — in  other  words,  into  constituents  of  neural 
process. 

124.  This  is  an  intelligible  theory  of  sensation,  but  it  only  if  assimi- 
seems  to  be  a  theory  of  perception,  because  between  the  ^"^'°° 
lines  of  it  we  read  an  account  of  '  assimilation  of  object  by  tranMfei^ 
subject,'  in  which  all  these  terms  have  a  diflferent  meaning.  ^^^  ^'^^ 
By  an  object  we  suppose  ourselves  to  mean  an  individual  within oon- 
thing — this  flower,  this  horse,  Ac. — somehow  external  to  the  fcip^-nesa, 
conscious  self  or  subject.     In  perception  this  object  is  sup-  fictioik 
posed  to  be  transferred  from  without  to  within  consciousness, 
and  'assimilation'  is  a  plausible  term  for  describing  this 
imaginary  process.     But  the  reader  who  accepts  it  as  such  is 
very  far  from  taking  it  to  mean  a  process  by  which  certain 
mechanical  elements  and  motions,  through  reaction  of  the 
organism,  become  neural  tremors,  and  thus  sensation.  When 
he  speaks  of  himself  as  perceiving  a  coloured  or  fragrant 
object,  he  does  not  mean  by  the  object  the  molecular  motions, 
which  through  reactions  of  the  organism  become  sensations 
of  colour  and  smell,  any  more  than  by  '  himself '  he  means 
the  reacting  organism,  or  by  the  perception  a  process  in 
which  the  molecular  motion  becomes  a  sensation.     By  the 
perceived  object — to    use  the  old  phraseology,  which  ex- 
presses  our    consciousness    well   enough,    though   without 
analysing  or  explaining  it — ^he  means  an  individual  thing 
possessing  sensible  qualities.     Neither  the  molecular  motion, 
which  the  sentient  organism  'assimilates'  or  converts  into 
sensation,  nor  any  one  or  number  of  the  moving  molecules, 
is  such  a  thing.     '  True,'  it  may  be  said,  '  but  what  is  there 
that  cam  properly  be  called  a  thing  possessing  sensible  quali- 
ties 9    Is  it  not  after  all  merely  something  that^  in  Locke's 


fi06  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUIL* 

language,  we  accustom  ourselves  to  suppose — a  creation  of 
our  own  minds  9 '  To  admit  this,  however,  is  not  to  come 
any  nearer  to  an  identification  of  the  object  perceived  with 
the  exciting  cause  of  a  sensation.  We  may  analyse  *  sen- 
sible qualities '  into  possibilities  of  sensation,  and  deny  that 
they  belong  to  any  *  thing/  so  far  as  that  term  is  taken  to 
imply  independence  of  thought  and  separation  in  space.  We 
may  say  that  to  *  perceive  a  flower '  is  to  believe  that  certain 
relations  to  feelings  which  are  not  being  felt  are  implied  in 
relation  to  the  sensations  of  sight  or  smell  which  are  actually 
present.  But  we  do  not  by  such  an  explanation  of  per- 
ception get  rid  either  of  the  object  or  of  its  unity.  We  have 
merely  substituted  a  conceived  unity — a  unity  derived  from 
the  one  subject  to  which  the  fact  that  a  certain  sensation  is 
now  felt,  and  the  facts  that  certain  other  sensations  may  be 
felt,  are  alike  relative — ^for  a  fictitious  unity  in  space.  To 
be  led  by  an  occurrence  of  a  certain  sensation  to  expect  other 
sensations  to  follow  is  not  to  perceive  an  object.  Unless 
the  possibilities  of  sensation  are  united  in  thought  vnth  each 
other,  and  with  the  fact  of  present  sensation,  there  is  no 
perceived  object.  The  object,  in  short,  is  just  the  unity  for 
thought  of  a  present  sensation  with  what,  as  sensation,  is 
past  or  future,  in  a  fact  to  which  distinctions  of  time  do  not 
apply. 
If  it  means  125.  Thus  the  recognition  of  inference  as  involved  in 
neural  re-  perception,  with  the  corresponding  analysis  of  the  qualities 
fltimuiufl,  of  a  perceived  object  into  possibilities  of  sensation,  while  it 
It  18  not  iu  effect  disposes  of  the  notion  of  the  *  thing  *  as  an  external 
tionofan  substratum  of  attributes,  only  brings  into  clearer  view  the 
•object.*  difference  of  the  perceived  object  from  the  exciting  cause  of 
sensation.  Anyone  who  has  realised  what  this  analysis 
amounts  to  must  hold  an  '  assimilation '  of  the  object  in 
that  sense  in  which  most  of  Mr.  Lewes'  readers  understand 
it — i,e.  as  a  transfer  of  it  from  without  to  within  conscious- 
ness— to  be  a  fictitious  process ;  while  in  that  stricter  sense 
in  which  Mr.  Lewes  himself  seems  to  understand  it,  as  a 
conversion  of  molecular  motion  into  sensation,  he  will  regard 
it  not  indeed  as  a  fictitious  process,  but  as  one  which  in  no 
way  constitutes  perception.  An  object  which  consists  in  a 
congeries  of  relations  or  of  related  possibilities  of  sensation 
is  not  something  external  to  consciousness  which  needs  to  be 
brought  within  it  by  assimilation.    It  depends  on  thought  for 


HR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OP  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  607 

its  existence.  There  is  no  special  limit  between  the  possi* 
bilities  of  certain  sensations  and  the  consciousness  that  such 
sensations  are  possible.  Nowhere  but  in  thought  does  the 
fact  of  a  sensation  having  occnired,  or  the  possibility  of 
its  recurring,  survive  the  occurrence  so  as  to  be  a  constituent 
of  an  object.  The  possibilities  of  sensation,  the  relations 
between  them,  the  unity  of  these  relations  in  an  object — all 
alike  presuppose  a  conscious  subject  as  the  condition  of  their 
existence,  no  less  than  vibrations  of  ether  require  an  optic 
nerve  as  the  condition  of  their  becoming  colour.  The 
^  assimilation '  bj  us  of  objects  so  constituted  can  only  mean 
the  development  in  us  of  the  consciousness  which  at  once 
conditions  and  is  realised  in  them,  not  a  process  by  which 
they  are  taken  into  consciousness  from  a  prior  existence 
independent  of  it.    On  the  other  hand, '  the  assimilation  *  * 

which  Mr.  Lewes  describes — that  reaction  of  the  nervous 
organism  upon  stimulus  which  constitutes  sensation — stands 
in  no  relation  whatever  to  the  object  as  he  describes  the 
object.  There  is  a  definite  relation,  no  doubt,  between  the 
organism  and  the  stimulating  agent,  but  this  agent  is  not 
the  object  perceived  in  the  perception  supervening  upon  the 
sensation  which  the  '  assimilation '  constitutes.  It  is  not  a 
group  of  possibilities  of  sensation  that  stimulates  the  or- 
ganism. It  is  not  a  stimulatory  motion  that  I  perceive  in 
the  perception  said  to  be  of  '  this  flower.'  The  stimulatory 
motion  may,  no  doubt,  by  microscopic  contrivance,  become  an 
object  of  perception;  but  not  to  the  sensation  which  it 
excites,  and  which  its  assimilation  by  the  sentient  organism 
constitutes ;  and  to  the  objective  existence  of  such  a  motion 
— ^to  its  existence  as  an  object — the  unifying  action  of  a 
conscious  subject  is  as  necessary  as  is  nervous  reaction  to 
the  occurrence  of  a  sensation. 

126.  The  essential  difference  between  an  object  in  its  He  con- 
relation  to  perception  and  an  external  stimulus  in  relation  *^^^®1^* 
to  sense  could  scarcely  have  escaped  Mr.  Lewes  if  he  had  stimnh 
examined  himself  more  strictly  as  to  his  meaning  when  he  ^^^  ^*>® 
calls  the  former  a  '  group  of  sensibles,*  and  when  he  speaks  reuSonr 
of  the  perception  of  a  flower  as  *  the  synthesis  of  all  the  between 
sensations  we  have  had  of  an  object  in  relation  to  our     ^^  ^ 
several  senses.'     By  a  group  of  sensibles  he  would  probably 
tell  us  that  he  means  a  group  of  moving  elements  which, 
under  certain  ascertainable  relations  to  the  organism,  yield 


sense; 


€06  MB.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDTTJM.^ 

iensations,  or — to  quote  an  expresrion  of  his  own — ^  objec- 
tive factcirSy  existing  as  permanent  possibilities,  which  may 
become  reals  when  combined  with  subjective  factors/  ^  But 
it  is  clear  that  the  subject  to  which  these  ^  objective  factors ' 
are  relative — and  unless  relative  to  a  snbject  thej  would 
not  be  objective  or  an  object  at  all—  cannot  be  the  feeling 
which  they  are  the  possibility  of  exciting,  cannot  be  a  series 
of  sensations  which  have  yet  to  occnr.  Thos  either  the 
term  *  objective '  or  the  term  *  subjective  *  in  the  sentence 
just  qnoted  is  improperly  used.  A  correlation  between  them 
is  inevitably  suggested,  but,  according  to  the  sense  in  which 
they  are  severally  used  in  the  sentence,  the  correlation  does 
not  exist.  The  *  subjective  factors '  of  the  second  clause  are 
nervous  reactions  upon  stimulus.  The  objective  factors  to 
which  they  answer  are  not  possibilities  of  sensation,  but 
actual  stimulants  of  sense.  On  the  other  hand,  the  *  objec- 
tive factors '  of  the  first  clause,  because  possibilities  of  sen- 
sation, and  not  actual  stimulants,  imply  a  subject  related  to 
them  otherwise  than  as  reacting  upon  stimulus.  Just  as  this 
subject  must  be  a  thinking  subject,  which  contemplates 
these  possibilities,  so  conversely  the  object  which  the  possi- 
bilities constitute,  'the  group  of  sensibles,'  will  not  be  a 
group  of  stimuli  now  acting  upon  sense,  but  a  group  com- 
posed of  the  permanent  relations  between  the  stimuli  and 
sense,  or  of  the  facts  that  under  such  and  such  conditions 
such  and  snch  sensations  are  excited.  In  short,  while  it 
will  not  be  untrue  to  say  that  external  stimuli  in  relation  to 
actual  or  possible  sense  form  the  perceived  object,  it  will  be 
quite  untrue  to  say  that  external  stimuli  are  the  object  in 
relation  to  sense  as  the  percipient  subject.  It  is  the  whole 
fact  formed  by  the  relations  of  the  stimuli  to  sense  that  is  the 
object,  and  it  is  not  to  sense  but  to  a  thinking  subject  that 
in  perception,  no  less  than  conception,  this  object  is  related. 
^ndre-  127.  As  with  the  *  group  of  sensibles'  scid  to  constitute 
PttstV"^  the  perceived  object,  so  with  the  *  synthesis  of  all  the  sen- 
prenent  sations  wc  have  had  of  an  object'  said  to  constitute  the 
'7tl"^  f  perception  of  it.  It  can  scarcely  be  necessary  to  point  out 
enceof  that  'sensations  we  have  had*  are  sensations  no  longer.  A 
combined  <  synthesis '  of  them  can  only  bear  one  of  two  quite  different 
one  object  meanings,  corresponding  to  those  which,  as  we  showed  above, 
may  attach  to  the  phrase  *  accumulation '  or  '  grouping/  of 

•  Prohkm  qf  Hfe  amd  Mind,  voL  ii.  p.  14. 


MR  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OP  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  609 

feelings.'  Jast  as  it  was  by  turning  to  account  the  double 
meaning  of  the  accumulatiou  of  feelings  in  experience  that 
Mr.  Lewes  was  able  to  make  the  experience  ^  in  which  the 
cosmos  arises'  appear  as  a  gradaal  result  of  the  registra- 
tion of  feelings  in  modi  Bed  structure,  so  it  is  by  help  of 
the  double  meaning  which  can  be  attached  to  ^  synthesis  of 
sensations '  that  perception  is  ostensibly  reduced  to  neural 
process.  Past  sensations  may  be  combined  either  in  accu- 
mulated effects  on  the  sentient  organism,  or  in  the  sense 
that  the  facts  of  their  occurrence,  and .  the  relations  under 
which  they  have  occurred,  are  retained  in  the  unity  of  con- 
sciousness as  qualifications  of  a  permanent  object.  It  is,  in 
truth,  only  the  former  synthesis  that  is  reducible  to  neural 
process,  while  it  is  only  the  latter  that  contributes  to  per- 
ception. That  which,  in  speaking  of  perception,  we  loosely 
call  a  synthesis  of  sensations,  is  really  a  synthesis  in  thought 
of  the  observed  fact  that  a  sensation  is  now  occurring  under 
certain  conditions  with  the  remembered  facts  that  certain 
other  sensations  have  occurred  under  the  same  conditions — 
a  synthesis  of  these  facts  as  belonging  to  the  nature  of  the 
one  thing  perceived.  Mr.  Lewes,  while  describing  percep- 
tion in  words  which  imply  all  this,  at  the  same  time  neutral- 
ises their  effect  by  writing  as  if  this  reference  of  combined 
facts  of  sense  to  an  object  were  no  more  than  the  revival  of 
a  past  feeling  by  the  occurrence  of  one  previously  associated 
with  it.  *The  feeling  originally  due  to  the  objective  presence 
of  the  stimulus  may  be  revived  in  the  objective  absence  of 
that  stimulus  by  the  excitation  of  the  neural  process  through 
one  or  more  of  the  feelings  associated  with  it.  The  object 
is  a  group  of  sensibles ;  any  one  of  these  is  capable  of  reviving 
the  feeling  of  the  others.'  The  second  of  these  sentences 
is  not  intended  to  state  more  than  is  justified  by  the  first, 
but  it  in  fact  states  something  wholly  different.  From  the 
revival  of  feeling  by  feeling  in  the  first  sentence,  we  pass  in 
the  second  to  the  revival  by  one  *  sensible  ' — an  object  quite 
different  from  the  *  objective  stimulus '  previously  mentioned 
— of  the  feeling  of  another  *  sensible  *  as  belonging  to  the 
same  object.  Of  this  transition  from  sensatian  to  the  recog- 
nised 'sensible,'  Mr.  Lewes  takes  no  account.  He  could 
not  do  80  without  the  admission  of  a  factor  in  consciousness 
wholly  irreducible  to  '  excitations  of  neural  process '  or  their 

Above,  §  87. 


610  BIR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDroM/ 


He  ignores 
di$<tiiiction 
between 
coinci* 
dence  of 
feelings 
and  infer- 
ence to 
their  pos- 
sible re- 
prodnc- 
lion. 


result.  The  consciousness  of  an  object,  a  sensible — the 
interpretation  of  a  feeling  as  the  appearance  of  an  object, 
and  thus  as  a  fact  which  remains  for  thought  when  the 
feeling  is  over — this  is  irreducible  to  neural  events,  but  it 
is  the  essential  thing  in  perception.  An  excitement  of  feel- 
ing by  external  stimulus,  and  thxiough  it  (perhaps)  a  fiunt 
revival  of  feelings  of  which  the  primary  external  stimulus  is 
absent,  may  always  accompany  perception,  but  they  never 
constitute  it.  It  is  not  the  excitement  of  feeling,  but  the 
interpretation  of  feeling  as  an  objective  fact,  which  suggests 
the  perceptive  inference ;  and  this  inference  itself  is  not  a 
revival  of  feelings,  but  a  judgment  that  certain  other  fSacts 
accompany  that  which  the  excited  feeling  is  taken  to  repre- 
sent ;  or,  to  apply  language  of  Mr.  Lewes'  own,  that  certain 
conditions  of  feeling  are  present,  which  would  constitute 
actual  feelings  if  certain  other  conditions  were  reinstated. 

128.  The  distinction  between  perception  of  the  sensible 
and  sensation  being  one  which  cannot  be  recognised  without, 
at  least,  serious  disturbance  of  Mr.  Lewes'  ^  psychogenesis,' 
he  adopts  the  easier  method  of  ignoring  it,  and  of  using 
sensation  as  equivalent  to  recognition  of  the  sensible  when- 
ever his  theory  requires  it.  And  it  requires  him  to  do  so  at 
every  step.  Thus  he  writes: — *The  very  combination  of 
present  feelings  with  past  feelings,  and  the  consequent 
inference  that  what  was  formerly  felt  in  conjunction  with 
one  group  of  feelings  will  agfiin  be  felt  if  the  conditions 
are  reinstated,  .  •  •  this  act  of  inference  is  necessary  to 
the  perception  of  the  object  ^'  apple,"  and  is  like  in  kind  to 
all  other  judgments.'  As  we  have  seen,  if  the  account  of 
perception  as  *  synthesis  of  sensations '  is  to  hold  good,  the 
perceptive  inference  should  be  no  more  than  the  revival  by 
a  feeling,  now  excited  from  without,  of  another  that  has 
been  previously  excited  along  with  it.  Now  on  picking  the 
above  sentence  to  pieces  we  shall  find  that  while  it  does  not 
expressly  state  this — while  some  of  its  words  indeed  imply 
the  contrary — it  yet  conveys  a  confused  impression  to  that 
effect,  just  such  an  impression  as  may  save  the  credit  of  the 
questionable  definition  of  perception.  The  *  combination  of 
present  feelings  with  past  feelings '  is  an  ambiguous  phrase. 
Strictly  taken,  it  should  mean  a  coincidence  of  feelings  now 
produced  by  external  stimulus  with  feelings  that  have  been 
80  produced,  but  are  now  reproduced  without  the  stimulus. 


MR.   LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  511 

Sach  a  coincidence,  however,  would  be  no  consciousness  of 
a  fact  or  object  whatever,  nor  would  an  Mnference  that  what 
was  formerly  felt  in  conjunction  with  one  group  of  feelings 
will  again  be  felt  if  the  conditions  are  reinstated '  be  a  con- 
sequence of  it*  This  inference  implies  an  interpretation  of 
a  present  feeling  as  a  conditioned  fact,  a  remembrance  of 
the  fact  that  in  the  past  other  feelings  have  been  similarly 
conditioned,  and  a  judgment  that  these  would  recur  if,  be- 
sides the  conditions  actually  present,  certain  other  conditions 
necessary  to  their  recurrence  were  reinstated.  Between  a 
coincidence  of  feelings,  excited  from  *  without '  and  repro- 
duced from  ^within,'  and  such  an  inference,  there  is  an 
interval  which  no  complexity  of  reproduction  can  account 
for.  The  sentence  quoted,  in  fact,  only  passes  muster  because 
the  '  combination  of  feelings '  is  not  understood  in  its  strict 
meaning,  but  as  a  combination  in  thought  of  the  conditions 
under  which  a  certain  feeling  is  now  felt  with  those  under 
which  certain  other  feelings  have  been  felt  before :  while  at 
the  same  time  enough  of  the  strict  meaning  survives  in  the 
mind  of  Mr.  Lewes  and  his  readers  to  keep  them  comfort- 
able in  the  conviction  that  perception  is  a  'synthesis  of 
sensations.'  Accordingly,  in  the  sequel,  the  'inference  that 
Avhat  was  formerly  felt  in  conjunction  with  one  group  of 
feelings  wiU  again  be  felt  if  the  conditions  are  reinstated  * 
is  treated  as  if  it  were  itself  a  reinstatement  of  the  feeling 
formerly  felt,  even  when  in  alternate  sentences  language  is 
used  which  implies  the  contrary.  Thus,  having  been  told 
in  one  sentence  that  the  inference  necessary  to  the  percep- 
tion of  an  apple  is  '  a  reinstatement  of  what  has  been,  but 
now  is  noty  present  to  sense '  (which  implies  that  it  is  not 
the  feeling  as  felt  which  is  reinstated '),  we  read  just  after* 
wards  that  being '  affected  now  in  a  way  similar  to  that  in 
which  I  was  formerly  affected  when  cer^n  coloured  shapes 
excited  my  retina,  this  affection  reinstates  the  feelings  which 
accompanied  it  on  those  occasions' — a  positive  assertion  that 
the  reinstatement  in  perception  is  of  the  actual  feeling.  Yet 
in  the  next  sentence  we  find  that  the  inference,  consisting 

>  Of. thestAtement^madeintheiaine  'sensible'   were  understood,   as   Mr. 

connection  (1,268),  that  in  perception  Lewes  oonstantlj  seems  to  understand 

'  nnapparent  sensibles  are  rendered  ap-  it,  as  a  group  of  sensations.  We  should 

parent' ;  which  would  be  nonsense  if,  aa  then  have  the  statement  that  in  percep- 

'nnapparent'  means    un/elt,  so  'ap-  tion  <  nnfelt  feelings  become  felt.' 
parent '  were  taken  to  mean  fiU^  or  if 


512  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OP  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM/ 

in  this  reinstatement,  has  to  be  verified  by  redaction  to 
*  sensible  experiences  * — a  reduction  for  which  there  would 
be  no  room  if  the  *  reinstatement '  or  inference  were  a  retom 
of  the  feeling  previously  experienced. 
How,  129,  jfo  one  thinks  more  consecutively  than  Mr.  Lewes 

feelings  when  his  speculation  is  following  a  track  which  allows  of 
feir  to-  hjg  doing  so.  These  see-saw  propositions  are  the  inevitable 
taccessive-  result  of  a  doctrine  which  requires  perception  to  be  a  com- 
ly  be  con-  binatioD  of  feelings,  each  constituted  by  neural  tremors,  and 
of  an 'in-  distinguished  only  according  as  these  tremors  are  directly 
dividual  excitcd  from  without,  (5r  are  produced  by  the  action  of  other 
^  ^^  tremors  so  excited,  while  yet  it  cannot  wholly  suppress  the 
constitutive  action  in  perception  of  the  subject  which  is 
neither  series  of  feelings  nor  sentient  organism,  but  for  which 
alone  feelings  are  related  facts.  Just  when  he  seems  to  be 
approaching  a  clear  statement  of  the  result  to  which  his 
analysis  of  the  sensible  '  thing '  would  naturaUy  lead  him,  it 
is  crossed  and  vitiated  by  the  counter-assertions  which  this 
doctrine  requires.  It  is  thus  that  in  the  passages  we  are 
considering  his  better  view — stated  at  large  elsewhere — 
that  *  reals  are  groups  of  relations,'  is  contradicted  by  the 
ground  of  distincton  alleged  between  perception  and  concep- 
tion. Perception  is  treated  as  a  consciousness  of  the  real 
which  is  yet  not  a  consciousness  of  relations.  *  Perceptions 
are  concerned  directly  with  the  terniis  of  feeling;  conceptions 
with  the  relations  of  those  terms' — a  statement  which  corre- 
spends  well  enough  with  the  view  that  perception  is,  while 
conception  is  not,  certain  *  sensations  themselves  in  a  syn- 
thesis,' but  not  so  well  with  the  view  that  perception  is  the 
presentation  of  the  real  as  constituted  by  relations.^  If  a 
perception  is  to  mean  a  synthesis  of  feelings  in  the  sense 
which  the  psychogenetic  theory  requires — ue.  as  a  coinci- 
dence between  certain  feelings  externally  excited  and  others 
which  these  reproduce — and  if  its  reality  is  to  mean  that  both 
sets  of  feeling,  as  well  as  the  coincidence  between  them,  'are 
actual  and  direct  results  of  external  and  internal  factors,' 
then  it  must  be  something  else  than  perception  that  is  the 
consciousness  of  relations  between  feelings  or  of  feelings  as 
related  facts.  The  question,  however,  will  then  arise  how 
the  perception,  which  is  thus  *  concerned  with '  feelings  to 
the  exclusion  of  their  relations — which,  to  speak  more  plainly, 

«  Problems  of  Life  and  Mind,  vol  i.  p.  193,  and  above,  §111. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  613 

consists  in  certain  feelings  felt  together  or  in  immediate 
seqnence  on  each  other — and  on  this  ground  is  distinguished 
fix>xn  conception,  can  at  the  same  time  be  distinguished  from 
conception  as  a  consciousness  of  an  individual  object  from 
a  general  idea.  What  remains  of  an  object  or  its  individu- 
ality when  relations  have  been  excluded? 

130.  Mr.  Lewes  does  not  anywhere,  so  far  as  we  have  u  <indivj- 
noticedy  tell  us  in  so  many  words  what  he  understands  by  duality' 
individuality,  but  in  his  instructive  chapter  on  'Is  and  utionto 
Appears'  he  writes  as  follows: — *A  thing  being  a  group  f?°"®°^* 
of  relations  varies  under  varying  relations.    Obviously,  this  now"quaii- 
changing  group  will  not  be  the  same  throughout  the  changes,  fled  by  re- 
but it  is  here  and  there  precisely  what  it  appears  here  and  <t£^ald 
there;  the  manifestation  changes  with  the  conditions.     A  then. 
word  has  no  meaning,  does  not  exist  as  a  word,  except  in 
relation;   the  meaning  lies  in  the  context.     So  with  the 
sensibles  which  are  the  signs  of  things/    Again :  '  The  logi- 
cal distinction  between  the  inward  essence  and  the  outward 
appearance  is  simply  this  :  the  thing  considered  outwardly, 
i.e.  in  its  presentation  to  sense,  is  the  thing  in  definite  rela- 
tions ;  but  besides  this  we  conceive  the  thing  as  capable 
of  other  relations  which  are  not  definitely  specified,  or  as 
existing  in  indeterminately  fluctuating  relations — a  mere 
possibility  of  appearance.'  *    We  shall  scarcely  be  wrong  in 
assuming  that  by  an  individual  object — this  animal  or  this 
flower — Mr.  Lewes  understands  what  he  here  calls  theHhmg 
as  it  appears  here  and  there,'  or  '  the  thing  in  its  presenta- 
tion to  sense ' ;  which  is  explained  to  mean  '  the  thing  in 
definite  relations.'    If  so,  the  individuality  of  an  object  is^ 
according  to  him,  a  particular  relation  to  sense  (called  also  a 
manifestation  or  presentation  of  it),  which  derives  its  nature 
from  manifold  other  relations,  as  a  word  derives  its  meanings 
from  the  context.    These  relations,  as  from  time  to  time 
they  stand,  form  the  changing  states  of  the  object,  which 
determine  that  presentation  to  sense  in  which  ite  individu* 
ality,  as  this  object,  consists.    A  feeling,  then,  can  only  be 
an  individual  object  for  a  consciousness  to  which  it  is  an 
appearance  of  something,  determined  by  the  present  nature 
of  that  somo thing;  an  appearance  which,  to  be  apprehended 
at  all,  must  be  apprehended  as  a  relation,  and  which  analysis 
reduces  to  relation,  and  nothing  else — ^to  a  relation  resulting 

'  Problems  of  Lift  and  Mind,  vol.  ii.  pp.  44,  46. 
VOL.  I.  L  L 


614  MR.  LE\^^S'  ACX:OUNT  OP  THE  'SOCIAL  BiEDIUM.' 

from  the  momentary  combination  of  innumerable  other  rela- 
tions. In  itself,  the  feeling  is  as  little  an  individual  object 
as  it  is  the  conscioasness  of  snch  an  object.  It  only  becomes 
an  individual  object  for  a  conscioasness  which  relates  one 
feeling  to  others  as  an  appearance,  under  the  special  con- 
ditions of  the  here  and  now,  of  what  has  appeared  under  the 
special  conditions  of  the  there  and  then — as  this  flower 
which  is  the  same  that  I  saw  here  in  bud  yesterday,  not  that 
which  I  saw  full  blown  in  the  other  plot.  This  conscious- 
ness cannot  be  any  one  or  number  of  the  feelings  related, 
but  it  is  what  we  mean  by  perception  and  what  Mr.  Lewes 
himself,  by  a  comparison  of  passages,  can  be  shown  to  mean 
by  it. 
Intact,  131.  Such  being  the  inconsistency  between  the  several 

ceptuaT"    statements  that  perception  is  of  the  individual  object,  and 
fuuctioD  18  that '  it  is  concerned  with  the  terms  of  feeling,'  as  opposed 
from  per-    ^  *  *^^  relations  of  those  terms,*  it  may  fairly  be  presumed 
ception,  no  that  Mr.  Lewes  would  have  avoided  it  if  the  reduction  of 
mafnsto     Perception  to  feeling  and  its  independence  of  conception 
bo  per-       could  have  been  maintained  without  it.    As  it  is,  the  con- 
ceived,       tradiction  being  unavoidable,  a  natural  instinct  leads  to  its 
being  disguised  by  a  metaphor.     Perceptions  are  to  concep- 
tions as  are  actual  numbers  or  magnitudes  to  the  algebraic 
^symbols  of  their  relations.'    Now,  if  the  parallel  to  the 
doctrine  stated  is  to  be  exact,  it  should  not  run  thus,  but  in 
the  form  that  perceptions  are  to  conceptions  as  the  appre- 
hension of  numbers  or  magnitudes  to  the  apprehension  of 
the  relations  between  them.     This  is  the  form  in  which  Mr. 
Lewes  puts  the  paitdlel  in  his  final  statement  at  the  end  of 
passage  (b)  above,  where  perception  is  said  to  be  concerned 
with  feelings,  as  with  quantities  forming  the  terms  of  a  saw, 
conception  with  the  relations  of  those  terms.     Put  in  this 
plain  form,  the  doctrine  at  once  challenges  the  question, 
What  are  numbers  and  magnitudes  apart  £rom  their  rela- 
tions P    What  is  four  apart  from  its  relation  to  two  as  its 
double,  and  to  the  unit  as  its  quadinipleP    What  is  any 
magnitude  apart  from   relation   to  its  parts,  or  to  other 
magnitudes  with  which  it  is  contrasted  9    Thus  Mr.  Lewes' 
own  illustration,  properly  applied,  itself  serves  to  show  that 
if  we  are  to  exclude  from  perception  the  function  which  he 
aflsigns  to  conception  the  perception  which  remains  will 
not  be  a  consciousness  of  any  object  at  all.     As  we  have 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE   'SOCIAL  MEDIUM/  515 

sufficiently  seen,  it  is  not  his  practice  in  speaking  of  percep- 
tion to  make  this  exclusion.  As  ^  feeling '  with  him  inchides 
the  consciousDess  of  relation  between  feelings,  he  can  make 
perception  a  combination  of  feelings,  and  yet  treat  it  as  in- 
YolyiDg  that  cognisance  of  relations  which  is  implied  in  the 
apprehension  of  an  object.  It  is  only  the  necessity  of  dis- 
tinguishing it,  as  a  mode  of  feeling,  from  conception  as  a 
mode  of  thinking,  that  leads  him  to  deny  to  perception  that 
*  concern  with  relations  *  which  must  be  admitted  to  belong 
to  conception ;  and  it  is  this  that  forces  on  us  the  qnestion, 
v^hich  might  otherwise  have  been  left  in  abeyance,  whether 
feeling  (in  any  sense  in  which  it  can  be  opposed  to  thought) 
can  restore  what,  in  Mr.  Lewes'  doctrine,  it  has  borrowed 
without  acknowledgment  from  thought,  and  yet  maintain 
its  credit  as  giving  the  objects  from  which  thought  takes  its 
departure. 

182.  So  long  as  conception  is  distinguished  from  percep-  what  does 
tion  as  being  concerned  with  the  relations  of  objects,  not  Mr.  Lewe» 
-with  the  objects  themselves,  we  know  what  to  make  of  the  ^nTby 
distinction.     It  is  exploded  by  Mr.  Lewes'  own  account  of  'concep- 
the  object  as  a  group  of  relations.     But  when  the  distinction  ^^^  ^ 
is  made  to  lie  in  the  '  symbolical  *  character  of  conception,  it  meaning  of 
becomes  difficult  to  know  precisely  what  is  intended  by  it.  len^p"^^ 
Fatting  together  the  passages  in  which  Mr.  Lewes  speaks  of  ideas/ 
conception,  we  are  unable  to  decide  whether  he  understands 
by  it  the  thought  of  the  relations  which  determine  an  object 
as   distinct  from  the  presentation  of  the  object;   or  the 
thought  which  employs  general  terms,  taken  to  summarise 
certain  relations,  without  rehearsing  to  itself  in  detail  what 
those  relations  are;  or  one  of  these  general  terms  itself; 
or  ^an  abstract  general  idea'  which  the  general  term  is 
supposed  to  express.    The  statement  that  conceptions  are 
'  general  signs  indicating  a  synthesis  of   sensations,'  the 
comparison  of  them  to  algebraic  letters  which  ^are  not 
numbers  and  magnitudes  themselves,  but  symbols  of  their 
relations,'  would  naturally  lead  us  to  suppose  that  concep- 
tions and  common  names  were  considered  one  and  the  same. 
But  if  so,  what  becomes  of  the  contrast,  which  implies  some 
co-ordination,  of  conception  with  perception?     Perception 
means  some  act  or  object  of  consciousness  (Mr.  Lewes  seems 
to  use  it  indifferently  for  both).     How,  then,  can  conception 
be  contrasted  with  it,  unless  conception,  too,  means  an  act 

L  L  2 


616  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

or  object  of  oonsciousness,  though  a  different  one  9  Are  we, 
then,  to  nnderstand  by  it  an  abstract  general  idea — an  idea 
not  of  this  animal  or  this  flower,  but  of  animal  or  flower 
in  general,  which  we  present  to  ourselves  in  thought  as  a 
symbol  of  any  number  of  individual  flowers  or  animals  that 
we  may  perceive  minus  their  individual  characteristics? 
So  Mr.  Lewes  occasionally  seems  to  say,  as  Locke  had  said 
before  him.^  Yet  it  might  have  been  hoped  that  the  criti- 
cism of  Locke's  doctrine  by  Berkeley  and  Hume  would  have 
prevented  its  reproduction  except  in  a  sounder  form.  With 
them  the  ^  general  idea '  becomes  a  particular  idea  as  under- 
stood to  be  representative  of  a  multitude  of  particular  ideas, 
or  as  regarded  in  a  certain  relation  common  to  it  with  them.' 
The  readers  of  Berkeley  and  Hume,  indeed,  have  been  apt  to 
suppose  that  this  interpretation  disposed  of  the  general  idea 
altogether,  as  if  no  mental  act  were  involved  in  the  view  of  the 
particular  idea  under  this  or  that  relation,  or  under  a  complex 
of  relations,  common  to  it  with  other  particular  ideas.  The 
true  account  of  the  matter  of  course  is  that  it  is  just  this  ap- 
prehension of  relation  which  is  the  general  idea  or  conception, 
nnd  which  the  general  term  expresses.  It  is  commonly  said 
that  conceptions  are  predicates  of  possible  judgments,  and 
tins  is  apt  to  be  understood  as  if  either  a  conception  had  some 
existence  apart  from  the  act  of  conceiving,  or  as  if  this  act 
were  other  than  the  act  of  judging.  But  in  truth  the  act 
of  conceiving  is  always  an  act  of  judging,  i,e.  of  determin- 
ing an  object  by  relations  thought  of.  A  conceived  object 
is  always  an  object  so  judged  of  and  determined.  It  is  only 
the  separability  of  a  general  term  from  any  particular  pre- 
dication in  which  it  may  be  employed,  that  conveys  the  false 
notion  of  our  having  conceptions  which  are  in  any  sense  dis- 
tinguishable from  judgments.  The  general  term  itself  has  no 
meaning  apart  from  its  use  in  actual  predication,  and,  as  so 
used,  it  is  always  relation  between  objects  that  it  indicates, 
never  a  class  to  which  objects  belong,  except  so  far  as  the  class 
is  the  embodiment  and  envisagement  of  relations. 
In  what  ^^^'  ^^^  ^^^®  understood,  the  conception  can  no  longer  be 

sense  are     regarded  as  *  symbolical,'  in  the  sense  of  being  an  abstract 

they'sym*       ,     _ 

»*oIich1  ?*             *  ^^  conception   of  an  animal  or  characteristics/— i^vAfeww  (ff  Lift  and 

flower  is  always  a  general  idea,  not  Mind,  vol.  i.  p.  186. 

only  embracing  all   that  is  known  or  *  Berkeley,    Principlea    of    Human 

thought  of  the  class  in  all  its  relations.  Knowledge,  Introduction.  §  16.     Hume, 

but    abstracted     from    all    individual  Treatise  of   Human    Nature,   book  L 

part  i.  i  7. 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  *  SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'    617 

object  which  stands  for  a  multitude  of  individual  objects.- 
There  is  not  for  thought,  any  more  than  in  reality,  a  flower 
in  general  representing  all  flowers  but  abstracted  from  all 
their  individual  characteristics.  When  I  judge  *  this  is  a 
plant'  or* this  plant  is  monocotyledonous,' the  conception 
expressed  by  the  predicate  is  of  certain  relations  determining 
the  subject,  and  forming  part,  though  only  part,  of  its  in- 
dividualisation.  There  is  no  sense  in  talking  of  such  rela- 
tions as  symboUcal  of  the  individuals  which  they  characterise. 
At  the  same  time  the  judgment,  if  it  concerns  matter  of  fact, 
undoubtedly  involves  symbolism,  and  that  in  two  ways. 
Some  sensation  must  be  regarded  as  a  sign  of  the  existence 
of  certain  facts,  of  the  presence  of  certain  possibilities  of 
sensation,  or  there  would  be  no  object  to  be  judged  of;  and 
the  relations,  whatever  fchey  may  be,  which  are  brought  into 
distinct  consciousness  in  the  conception  of  the  object,  as 
expressed  by  the  predicate,  are  known  to  imply  others  of 
-which  the  consciousness  remains  in  abeyance.  In  the  latter 
sense  the  conception  may  be  said  to  be  symbolical,  not  as  an 
abstraction  standing  for  a  multitude  of  individuals,  but  as 
the  thought  of  a  relation  implying  other  relations,  known  to 
be  implied  in  it,  but  not  distinctly  thought  of.*  If  concep- 
tion were  not  in  this  sense  symbolical — if  general  terms  did 
not  thus  summarise  for  us  relations  of  relations  cul  indefinitum 
— -^reasoning  would  be  as  difiicult  for  us  as  the  calculation  of 
numbers  without  the  multiplication  table.  At  the  same  time 
it  renders  us  liable  to  the  illusion  arising  from  the  substitu- 
tion of  words  for  facts ;  against  this  illusion  we  can  only 
guard  ourselves  by  writing  out  in  fall,  so  to  speak,  the  signi- 
fication of  our  formulae — ^by  rehearsing  to  ourselves  the 
matters  of  fact  wrought  into  our  experience,  the  known 
relations  between  phenomena,  which  our  general  terms 
Bummarise.  To  do  so»  however,  is  not  to  put  something  else 
in  the  place  of  conception  ;  it  is  not  to  feel  what  before  we 
have  only  thought.  It  is  simply  to  conceive  clearly  and 
fully,  to  think  what  our  terms  mean.  These  terms  repre- 
sent the  result  of  Qonception.  The  relations  or  matters  of 
fact,  into  which  we  analyse  their  meaning,  are  themselves 
given  to  us  in  and  by  conception,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
word,  as  the  act,  other  than  feeling,  in  which  through  deter- 
mination by  relations  a  feehng  becomes  a  definite  object 

[>  '  Leibnitz '  is  here  written  on  the  margin  of  the  MS.^£d.] 


618  MB.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCIAL  MEDIUM.' 

-—a  yisnal  sensation,  for  instance,  a  particalar  flower.  From 
conception  in  this  sense — a  conception  necessary  to  the  sim- 
plest perception — that  expressed  by  snch  plication  as 
stands  in  most  need  of  analysis  or  verification  {e.g»  *  neural 
process  is  a  fusion  of  tremors ')  does  bat  differ  as  the  more 
complex  from  the  less,  as  the  judgment  bj  which  a  greater 
number  of  other  judgments  are  presupposed  from  that  by 
which  a  less  number  are  so. 
They  are  ^^^*  ^^  '  realisation  of  the  links  in  a  chain  of  reasoning/ 
*r«miiit6d/  then,  means  in  the  first  place  analysis  of  the  complex  con- 
duction'to  ^V^^^^9  through  which  the  reasoning  is  carried  on,  into  the 
■enratioM,  judgments  which  they  carry  in  solution ;  and  secondly,  if 
ductioifcf  ^®*®  judgments  concern  matters  of  fact  or  relations  of 
Mnsation  perceivable  objects,  the  testing  of  their  truth  by  experiment. 
icDo^  Nature  means  for  us  a  system  of  relations  as  determining 
conditionB.  relations  to  sense.  The  conceptions,  then,  employed  in  a 
chain  of  reasoning  that  purports  to  be  about  nature  must  be 
resoluble  into  judgments  as  to  such  relations,  which  in  the 
last  resort  must  be  verifiable  by  the  production  of  sensation. 
A  theory,  which  is  the  combined  result  of  many  theories, 
each  to  the  effect  that  a  certain  kind  of  feeling  is  deter- 
mined by  certain  conditions,  must  be  tested  by  the  occur- 
rence of  the  feelings  as  severally  determined  by  those  con- 
ditions. Now  neither  the  determination  of  the  feeling  by 
its  conditions,  nor  the  consciousness  of  it  as  so  determined, 
is  itself  a  feeling ;  yet  only  as  so  determined  and  known  to 
be  so  does  the  feeling  prove  or  disprove  the  theory,  or  indeed 
tell  us  anything  whatever.  The  feeling  may  occur  any 
number  of  times,  but  unless  the  conditions  are  known  it 
might  as  well,  for  any  bearing  that  it  has  on  the  theory,  not 
occur  at  all.  It  is  not  the  feeling  that  verifies  the  theory, 
but  the  ascertainment  of  the  fact  that  it  is  determined  by 
certain  conditions — an  ascertainment  which  we  arrive  at  by 
producing  it,  or  finding  it  produced,  when  all  other  conditions 
have  been  excluded.  For  us,  the  verifiers,  at  any  rate,  it  is 
only  in  a  judgment,  the  same  in  form  with  that  which  as  unve- 
rified we  call  a  mere  conception,  that  the  determination  of  the 
feeling  by  its  conditions  is  established*  The  difference 
between  the  theory  and  the  experiment  in  which  it  is  verified 
is  a  difference,  not  between  a  conception  and  feeling,  but 
between  the  mere  conception  of  relation  of  a  feeling  to  its 
conditions,  and  the  same  conception  as  formed  when,  the 


MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  *  SOCIAL  MEDIUM.'  619 

operative  conditions  being  precisely  known,  and  the  feeling 
at  the  same  time  actually  felt,  there  is  no  possibility  of  the 
feeling  being  determined  otherwise  than  as  we  judge  it  to  be. 
The  relation  between  the  feeling  and  its  conditions,  once 
established,  takes  its  place  in  the  ^  cosmos  of  experience '  quite 
irrespectively  of  any  continuance  or  repetition  of  the  feeling 
itself.  It  is  this  relation,  not  the  mere  feeling,  that  is  the 
fact  with  which  conception  must  tally  if  it  is  to  be  really 
true.  Whether  this  relation  can  itself  be  anything  else  than 
an  objective  judgment,  whether  it  can  be  otherwise  than 
through  presence  to  a  thinking  subject  that  manifold  condi- 
tions, separate  in  space  and  time,  are  united  in  the  deter- 
mination of  an  event,  is  a  question  which  need  not  here  be 
raised.  To  us  at  any  rate  it  is  only  in  judgment,  as  involv- 
ing the  conception  of  relations,  and  thus  as  the  distinctive 
function  of  thought,  that  any  object  can  be  given. 

135.  That  Mr.  Lewes  should  regard  the  realisation  of  the  ifther 
links  in  a  chain  of  reasoning  as  the  substitution  for  concep-  could  be  so 
tion  of  a  succession  of  feelings,  however  ill  it  may  square  ^oy  would 
with  the  admission  that  ^  things  are  groups  of  relations '  no  longer 
and* real  objective  judgments,*  is  the  proper  corollary  of  ^^'™ p*" 
his  reduction  of  perception  to  feeling,  and  of  his  identifica-  knowledge 
tion  of  the  sensible  with  sensation.     *  Could  we  realise  all  ^^  *  ^^'^^ 
the  links  in  this  chain,  by  reducing  conceptions  to  percep- 
tions, and  perceptions  to  sensibles,  our  most  abstract  reason- 
ing would  cease  to  be  anything  but  a  succession  of  sensa- 
tions.'    We  submit,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  reduction  of 
conceptions  to  perceptions  or  to  sensibles  is  one  thing,  their 
reduction  to  a  succession  of  sensations  quite  another ;  and 
that  if  the  realisation  described  were  in  truth  one  which  left 
nothing  but  a  succession  of  sensations,  it  would  leave  nothing 
to  be  real.    Conception  *  reduced  to  perception*  does  not 
cease  to  be  conception.    A  conception,  being  of  certain  rela- 
tions between  possible  feelings,  or  of  certain  further  relations 
as  determining  these,  is  *  reduced  to  perception  *  when  one 
of  the  feelings,  of  which  the  determination  is  conceived, 
is  actually  being  felt.     Such  reduction  may  be  necessary,  as 
we  have  seen,  for  the  verification  of  a  conception,  and  also 
for  its  further  determination,  sinoe  it  is  only  in  this  way  that 
the  fact  conceived  of  can  be  observed  under  other  relations 
than  those  with  which  we  are  previously  familiar.     But  if  in 
perception  we  ceasedto  conceive  and  merely  felt,  the  perception 


620  MR.  LEWES'  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  'SOCL^  MEDIUM.' 

would  yield  nothing  either  to  verify  or  to  extend  the  judg- 
ments derived  from  previous  experience.  The  given  feelingy 
undetermined  by  consciousness  of  relations,  would  neither 
illustrate  the  truth  of  previous  judgments  as  to  the  conditions 
of  such  feeling  nor  suggest  new  ones*  It  might  recall  or  be 
followed  by  other  feelings  in  any  number,  but  if  they  followed 
simply  as  a  succession  of  feelings,  not  conceived  as  relative 
to  a  reality  other  than  themselves,  the  theory  '  reduced '  to 
such  a  succession  would  have  ceased  to  belong  to  the  con- 
sciousness in  which  '  the  universe  arises,'  would  no  longer 
form  part  of  knowledge  of  a  world. 


PAET  V. 


AN  ANBWEB  TO  MS.  HOD0BON. 


{Thb  artiele  to  which  this  ia  an  answer  appeared  in  the  ComUiM»rary  Sevitw  Ibr 
December  1880,  under  the  title  *  Froleaeor  Oreen  as  a  Critic^  by  Biehaid 
Hodgson,  jnn.'^£D.] 

Mb.  Hodgson's  criticism  of  the  articles  which  three  years 
ago  I  contributed  to  the  Contemparcury  Review  on  certain 
points  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy,  is  of  a  kind  which, 
though  much  averse  to  polemics,  I  can  scarcely  pass  over  in 
silence.  It  amounts  to  a  prolonged  charge  of  unfair  dealing 
with  those  passages  from  Mr.  Spencer's  'Psychology'  on 
which  I  commented.  If  the  articles  to  which  this  charge 
relates  had  appeared  recently,  I  might  have  presumed  that 
the  substance  of  them  would  still  be  in  the  mind  of  such 
persons  as  might  read  the  charge,  and  have  trusted  to  their 
candid  judgment  to  take  it  for  what  it  may  be  worth.  But 
after  so  long  an  interval  I  must  confess  to  having  retained 
myself  but  a  very  slight  recollection  of  what  I  had  written, 
and  my  readers,  if  I  had  any,  probably  retained  still  less. 
Thus,  when  my  eyes  first  fell  on  Mr.  Hodgson's  pages,  I  experi- 
enced a  good  deal  more  than  a  bad  quarter  of  an  hour.  For 
some  little  time  I  feared  that  I  might  have  been  guilty  of 
some  of  the  misrepresentations  and  misstatements  ascribed 
to  me.  Only  a  careful  reading  of  my  articles,  and  of  the 
chapters  from  Mr.  Spencer  to  which  they  relate,  reassured 
me  to  the  contrary.  If  that  was  the  effect  of  Mr.  Hodgson's 
accusation  upon  myself,  I  must  expect  a  permanent 
suspicion  of  the  same  kind  to  remain  with  others  who  have 
no  opportunity  of  reverting  to  my  articles,  unless  I  make 
some  reply.  I  have,  therefore,  unwillingly  asked  leave  to  do 
so,  which  the  editor  of  the  Contemporary  Review  has  kindly 
granted  me. 


628  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR  HOIXJSON. 

In  making  my  defence  I  hope  to  avoid  nsing  any  expres- 
sions which  Mr.  Hodgson  may  find  offensive.  I  have  no 
fault  to  find  with  him  except  for  the  long  period  he  has 
allowed  to  elapse  before  bringing  his  indictment,  and  for 
thus  having  compelled  me  to  retnm  to  a  forgotten  contro- 
versy when  I  was  otherwise,  and  perhaps  better,  employed. 
He  occasionally,  indeed,  as  it  seems  to  me,  falls  a  little 
short  of  the  courtesies  of  controversy,  but  this  I  readily 
ascribe  to  a  generous  warmth  on  behalf  of  an  eminent 
writer  whom  he  thinks  unfairly  attacked.  Sometimes,  too,  he 
misunderstands  my  argument  in  a  manner  which  naturally 
strikes  me  as  strange ;  but  I  reflect  that  every  writer  find!s 
his  own  arguments  clearer  than  others  can  be  expected  to  do ; 
and  I  am  too  well  avrare  how  easy  a  retort  is  suggested  by 
the  complaint  of  being  misunderstood,  to  make  such  a  com- 
plaint on  my  own  account.  When  I  am  obliged  to  show,  in 
order  to  clear  myself  of  the  charge  of  misrepresentation, 
that  Mr.  Hodgson  has  missed  my  point,  I  shall  not  lay  the 
blame  upon  him. 

The  purpose  of  my  articles,  as  appeared  from  their  very 
title,  was  not  to  make  a  complete  examination  of  Mr. 
Spencer's  *  Psychology,*  still  less  to  estimate  the  general 
value  of  his  philosophy,  which  in  many  respects  I  humbly 
recognise,  but  to  consider  the  trut£  of  his  doctrine  on  a 
particular  point — ^his  doctrine  of  the  independence  and 
externality  of  the  object.  On  behalf  of  idealism — ^though 
not  such  idealism  as  Mr.  Spencer  occasionally  refutes — I 
dispute  this  doctrine  in  the  sense  in  which  Mr.  Spencer 
holds  or  states  it.  I  do  not  admit  that  the  relation  of  object 
to  subject  is  truly  described  by  saying  that  the  object  or 
non-ego  is  independent  of,  or  external  to,  the  subject  or  ego. 
I  hold  that  the  object  has  no  real  existence  apart  from  the 
subject  any  more  than  the  subject  apart  from  the  object. 
In  consequence,  I  call  in  question  Mr.  Spencer's  whole 
theory  of  the  origin  of  intelligent  consciousness  as  arising 
ultimately  from  the  operation  of  the  object,  unknown  in 
itself,  upon  a  subject  to  which  it  stands  in  this  relation  of 
independence  and  externality. 

Having  come  to  the  conclusion  for  my  own  part  that  this 
view  of  the  relation  between  object  and  subject  did  not 
admit  of  being  coherently  thought  out,  or,  as  I  ventured  in 
my  article  perhaps  too  presumptuously  to  say,  that  'the 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR,  HODGSON.  528 

existence  of  a  real  world  beyond  consciousness '  is  an  nn- 
meaning  phrase,  I  set  myself  the  task  of  inquiring  whether 
a  writer,  so  able  as  Mr.  Spencer,  bad  succeeded  in  making 
out  a  consistent  justification  of  it.  Naturally,  having  statf^d 
— fairly  and  snflSciently,  as  I  thought — what  the  doctrine  in 
question,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's  account  of  it,  was,  I 
did  not  feel  bound  to  refer  at  length  to  all  the  passages,  and 
all  the  various  forms,  in  which  it  is  set  forth.  Yet  the  main 
burden  of  Mr.  Hodgson's  indictment  is  that  I  have  ignored 
some  of  them.  A  candid  reader  of  my  articles  would  admit, 
I  think,  that  the  purport  of  them  all  was  kept  constantly  in 
view.  It  was  not  my  business,  however,  to  be  always 
restating  the  doctrine  while  examining  the  sufficiency  of  the 
justification  of  it.  I  revert  to  it  often  enough,  I  think,  to 
keep  it  in  view  of  the  intelligent  reader,  but  the  passages  on 
which  I  chiefly  dwell  are  certainly  those  which  illustrate,  as 
it  seems  to  me,  the  impossibility  of  coherently  maintaining  it. 
The  effect  of  these  might  have  been  the  more  striking, 
though  the  article  would  have  been  considerably  lengthened, 
if  I  had  printed  the  assertions  of  ^Realism,'  which  Mr. 
Hodgson  condemns  me  for  ignoring,  at  the  beginning  and 
end  of  everjr  paragraph. 

In  some  of  the  passages  which  I  quote  the  incoherence 
noticed  takes  the  form,  as  I  point  out,  of  an  apparent  accept- 
ance of  that  sort  of  idealism  which  may  be  named  after 
either  Berkeley  or  Hume — the  doctrine  which  identifies  the 
esse  with  the  percipi.  Thereupon  Mr.  Hodgson  gravely 
complains  that  I  'suppose  Mr.  Spencer  to  accept  Berkeley's 
doctrine,'  whereas  '  by  no  writer  has  the  existence  of  an 
external  reality,  apart  from  perception,  been  insisted  on  with 
greater  rigour  *  (I  should  prefer  to  write  *  vigour ')  *  than  by 
Mr.  Spencer.*  The  whole  point  of  my  charge  against  Mr. 
Spencer  would  be  gone  if  I  supposed  anything  of  the  sort. 
I  call  particular  attention  to  his  denunciation  of  the  Berke- 
leyan  idealism,  but  I  point  out  also  that  in  the  process  of 
*  establishing  beyond  question  *  (to  use  Mr.  Hodgson's  ex- 
pression) the  doctrine,  on  the  strength  of  which  he  denounces 
this  idealism,  he  in  words  accepts  it.  Nor  is  it  merely 
Berkeley's  doctrine  that  according  to  my  critic  I  suppose 
Mr.  Spencer  to  accept.  I  even  Mmply  that  he  holds  the 
same  view  as  myself  concerning  external  objective  existence,' 
*-a  view  which  throughout  the  articles    in  question  was 


524  AN  ANSWER  TO  MB.  HODGSON. 

carefiilly  distingaished  from  Berkeley's,  tbongli,  probablj 
from  defects  in  mj  own  power  of  exposition,  I  do  not  seem 
to  have  made  the  distinction  apparent  to  Mr.  Hodgson.  It 
is  accordingly  thought  to  be  to  the  purpose  to  bring  np 
against  me  Mr.  Spencer's  assertions  of  the  independence 
and  externality  of  the  object,  which  forms,  so  to  speak,  the 
yerj  text  of  my  articles,  but  which  I  try  to  show  that  he 
fails,  not  from  lack  of  power,  bat  from  the  inherent  impossi* 
bilily  of  the  task,  in  consistently  maintaining.  My  purpose 
being  to  point  out  an  incoherence  between  Mr.  Spencer's 
particular  form  of  realism  and  the  process  by  which  he 
*  establishes  '  it,  I  am  found  fault  with  for  not  ha\ring  dwelt 
at  greater  length  on  the  passages  where  this  realism  is 
asserted.  But  to  have  done  so  would  obviously  have  been 
merely  to  repeat  and  prolong  my  statement  of  what  I  con- 
ceive to  be  his  inconsistencies  on  this  particular  point — 
a  statement  which  readers  more  sympathetic  than  Mr. 
Hodgson  must,  I  fear,  have  thought  quite  long  enough  as  it 
was. 

So  much  for  the  general  tenor  of  Mr.  Hodgson's  objec- 
tions. I  come  now  to  particular  points.  The  first  misinter- 
pretation, or  group  of  misinterpretations,  with  which  I  am 
charged,  relates  to  the  following  passage  which  I  quote  from 
Mr.  Spencer  (*  Psychology,'  §  448) : — *  Mysterious  as  seems 
the  consciousness  of  something  which  is  yet  out  of  con- 
sciousness, the  inquirer  finds  that  he  alleges  the  reality  of 
this  something  in  virtue  of  the  ultimate  law — ^he  is  obliged 
to  think  it  There  is  an  indissoluble  cohesion  between  each 
of  those  vivid  and  definite  states  of  consciousness  known  as  a 
sensation,  and  an  indefinable  consciousness  which  stands  for 
a  mode  of  being  beyond  sensation  and  separate  frx)m  himself.' 

In  order  to  meet  Mr.  Hodgson's  remarks  on  my  discussion 
of  this  passage,  I  must  ask  leave  to  repeat  that  discussion  in 
full.  I  am  sorry  to  trespass  so  far  on  the  pages  of  the 
Contemporary y  but  when  my  critical  honour,  so  to  speak,  is 
at  stake,  I  cannot  afford  to  be  compendious.  My  remarks 
on  the  passages  quoted  were  as  follows : — *  Here  it  appears 
that  the  very  ground  asserted  for  the  **  reality  of  something 
out  of  consciousness  "  implies  that  this  '^  something  "  is  not 
"  out  of  consciousness,"  and  that  the  very  proposition  which 
is  intended  to  state  its  outsideness  to  consciousness  in  fact 
states  the  contrary.    The  "  something  out  of  consciousness  " 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  626 

**  is  something  we  are  obliged  to  think,"  and  is  pronounced 
'*  real "  on  account  of  this  obligation.  It  does  not  appear, 
indeed,  whether  the  ^*  obligation  "  is  taken  to  constitute  its 
reality,  or  merely  to  be  an  evidence  of  it  as  something 
extraneous ;  but  this  can  only  make  a  difference  between  the 
greater  or  less  directness  of  the  contradiction  involyed  in 
the  statement.  It  is  a  direct  contradiction  to  call  that  "  out 
of  consciousness  "  of  which  the  reality  lies  in  the  obligation 
to  think  it,  but  the  other  interpretation  of  Mr.  Spencert 
meaning  only  puts  the  difficulty  a  step  farther  back.  It  is 
clear  that  the  '^  something  we  are  obliged  to  think  "  is  some*, 
thing  we  do  think,  and  therefore  is  not  "  out  of  conscious- 
ness." Nay,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  ilie  sole  account  to 
be  given  of  it  is  that  it  is  a  necessity  of  consciousness.  If, 
then,  its  "reality"  is  "out  of  consciousness,"  we  have 
something  determined  solely  as  being  that  which  its  reality 
is  determined  solely  as  not  being.  Of  the  "  something " 
we  can  only  say  that  it  is  found  in  consciousness ;  of  its 
** reality*'  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  "out  of  conscious- 
ness." We  look  anxiously  to  the  next  sentence  for  an 
explanation  of  the  paradox,  but  only  find  it  stated  more  at 
large.  The  obligation  to  think  the  "  something  "  now  appears 
as  its  "  indissoluble  cohesion  with  each  sensation,"  and,  as 
was  to  be  expected,  the  "  something  "  thus  cohering  is  now 
admitted  to  be  itself  a  "  consciousness."  Its  distinction  is 
that  it  is  "  indefinable,"  and  that  it  "  stands  for  a  mode  of 
being  beyond  sensation."  This  "mode  of  being  beyond 
sensation^*  might, indeed,  be  understood  in  a  way  which  leads 
to  a  true  conception  of  the  object,  but  with  Mr.  Spencer  it 
is  merely  equivalent  to  the"  something  out  of  consciousness" 
of  the  previous  sentence.  The  only  difference,  then,  which 
this  further  statement  makes  is,  that  the  something  out  of 
consciousness  which  we  are  obliged  to  think  is  now  explicitly 
broken  into  an  "  indefinable  consciousness "  on  the  one 
hand,  and  "a  mode  of  being  beyond  consciousness"  for 
which  it  stands  on  the  other.  Now,  an  indefinable  con- 
sciousness means  a  consciousness  of  which  no  account  can 
be  given  but  simply  that  it  is  a  consciousness.  The  result, 
then,  is  that  the  "  object "  about  which  Mr.  Spencer  under- 
takes to  set  the  idealists  right,  is,  according  to  him,  something 
of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  consciousness,  "  standing 
for ''  something  of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  not 


626  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

consciousness.  In  corresponding  passages  elsewbere,  instead 
of  "  stands  for,"  Mr.  Spencer  writes  "  symbolises,"  but  what 
becomes  of  the  symbolical  relation  when  of  the  symbol 
nothing  can  be  said  but  that  it  is  not  the  thing  symbolised, 
and  of  this  nothing  but  that  it  is  not  the  symbol  P '  ^ 

Now  what  are  the  errors  of  statement  or  conception  of 
which  according  to  Mr.  Hodgson  I  am  here  guilty  9  In  the 
first  place  I  suggest  a  doubt  whether  in  Mr.  Spencer's  mind 
the  ^  obligation  to  think '  the  reality  of  something  out  of 
consciousness  may  not  be  taken  to  constitute  its  reality, 
rather  than  to  be  merely  eyidence  of  its  reality  as  of  some- 
thing extraneous.  I  do  this  although  ^  the  passage  quoted 
from  the  "  Psychology  "  occurs  towards  the  end  of  a  long 
systematic  discussion  as  to  the  nature  of  this  ^*  obligation,''  a 
discussion  which  Professor  Green  thinks  proper  entirely  to 
ignore,  and  from  which  he  arbitrarily  severs  the  passage  he 
deems  it  advisable  to  criticise.'  It  would  be  more  charitable 
on  Mr.  Hodgson's  part  to  believe  that  I  may  have  read  the 
author  whom  he  justly  admires  with  other  eyes  than  his,  yet 
without  the  malice  prepense  which  he  seems  here  to  ascribe 
to  me.  The  reader  will  observe  that  I  only  suggest  the 
objectionable  interpretation,  with  a  line  and  a  half  of  com- 
ment, as  an  alternative  to  another  not  seriously  differing 
from  that  which  Mr.  Hodgson  (if  I  understand  him  rightly) 
takes  to  be  the  true  one,  and  which  I  immediately  proceed 
to  discuss  more  at  large.  After  reading  afresh,  however,  the 
*  systematic  discussion '  which  I  am  said  to  have  ignored,  I 
am  still  not  convinced  that  Mr.  Spencer  has  in  fact  any 
other  notion  of  the  reality  of  the  ^  something  out  of  con- 
sciousness '  than  that  it  consists  in  our  obligation  to  think 
it.  Of  course  I  never  supposed,  nor  could  any  intelligent 
reader  imagine  me  to  have  supposed,  that  if  Mr.  Spencer 
were  asked — Do  you  mean  by  the  reality  of  the  object  or 
non-ego  no  more  than  that  we  are  obliged  to  think  it  ? — he 
would  answer,  Yes.  But  what  after  all  does  he  mean  by 
its  reality  9  He  cannot  consistently  ascribe  to  it  any  quali- 
fication which  a  consciousness  is  necessary  to  constitute. 
After  abstraction,  however,  of  all  such  qualification,  there 
seems  to  remain  something,  *  absolutely  unkown,'  to  which 
all  the  work  of  consciousness  is  due.  This  unknown  some- 
thing, this  Tbiiig-in-itself  independent  of  all  relation  to 

«  AboTe,  Part  I,  §  le. 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  527 

eonscionsness,  which  is  supposed  (to  nse  an  expression  of 
Locke's)  *  to  force  itself  upon  us  whether  we  will  or  no/  is 
what,  so  far  as  I  can  gather,  Mr.  Spencer  takes  the  object  to 
be  when  he  keeps  most  closely  to  his  doctrine  that  it  is 
independent  of  consciousness.  But  if  challenged  to  say  in 
-what  the  reality  of  the  object,  thus  conceived,  consists,  I  do 
not  know  what  answer  he  could  consistently  give,  but  either 
that  the  question  is  unanswerable,  or  that  the  reality  of  this 
Unknown  consists  in  its  forcing  itself  upon  us  whether 
we  will  or  no ;  in  other  words,  in  our  being  obliged  to 
think  it. 

It  is  true,  however,  that  in  the  discussion  preceding  the 
passages  I  have  quoted,  Mr.  Spencer  pays  so  little  heed  to  his 
own  doctrine  of  the  *  independence '  of  objective  existence,  as 
to  take  his  examples  of  it  from  the  ordinary  objects  of  our 
experience,  such  as  'this  book' — objects  which,  though  I 
think  him  wrong  in  calling  them  elsewhere  *  clusters  of  vivid 
states  of  consciousness'  (ie.  clusters  of  sensations),  are  clearly 
dependent  for  being  what  they  are  on  relations  to  conscious- 
ness and  between  states  of  consciousness.  So  long  as  the 
object  is  taken  to  be  represented  by  things  of  this  sort,  the 
difficulty  of  saying  in  what  its  reality  consists  of  course  does 
not  arise ;  as  it  does  arise  when  the  doctrine  of  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  object — its  independence  of  relations  to 
consciousness — is  insisted  on.  It  may  have  been  inoppor- 
tune, therefore,  in  this  connection  to  suggest  the  doubt 
whether  or  no  the  obligation  to  think  the  reality  of  some- 
thing out  of  consciousness  was  taken  to  constitute  its  reality. 
On  the  most  hostile  construction,  however,  it  scarcely  amounts 
to  a  misinterpretation,  seeing  that  in  almost  the  next  line  I 
proceed  to  give,  and  to  found  my  argument  upon,  an  inter- 
pretation of  the  sentence  in  question  which  Mr.  Hodgson 
does  not  seem  to  dispute.  I  there  take  it  as  meaning  that 
the  evidence  of  the  reality  of  something  out  of  consciousness 
is  the  obligation  to  think  that  it  is  real.  It  is  true  that  in 
regard  to  the  words  *  we  are  obliged  to  think  it,'  I  was  not 
quite  sure  whether  the  '  it '  should  be  taken  as  referring  to 
the  *  something*  of  the  previous  clause  or  to  *the  reality  of 
this  something.'  Is  it  profane  to  inquire  whether  Mr. 
Spencer  himself  had  this  distinction  in  view  when  he  wrote 
the  words?  Accordingly  I  say,  *it  is  clear  that  the  "some- 
thing we  are  obliged  to  think  "  is  something  we  do  think/ 


628  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

when  perhaps  I  should  rather  have  said  that  the  sometUn^ 
of  which  we  are  obliged  to  think  the  reality  is  something  we 
do  think.  The  alteration,  however,  would  not  affect  mj 
argument;  which  is,  that  the  attempt  to  establish  the  real 
existence  of  something  out  of  consciousness  on  a  necessity  of 
thinking  that  such  a  something  really  exists — ^from  the 
nature  of  the  case,  not  from  any  fault  in  Mr.  Spencer's  way 
of  putting  it — involves  a  contradiction.  The  argument  may 
be  sound  or  unsound.  That  is  a  point  which  it  would  be  out 
of  place  here  to  discuss.  But  I  cannot  see  that  it  involves 
any  misinterpretation  of  Mr.  Spencer. 

The  next  ^  misinterpretation  *  relates  to  the  second  sentence 
of  the  passage  quoted  by  me  from  the  *  Psychology '  (§  448), 
and  requoted  above.  I  took  it,  I  must  fraiikly  confess,  to  be 
an  explanatory  enlargement  of  the  sentence  immediately  pre- 
ceding. According  to  Mr.  Hodgson,  I  ought  to  have  seen 
that  the  first  sentence  *  represents  the  necessity  of  the  Bea- 
Ustic  conclusion  under  its  logical  aspect,'  while  ^  the  second 
represents  it  under  its  psychological  aspect.'  With  every 
willingness  to  confess  an  error  which  seems  to  me  to  have  no 
bearing  on  the  argument,  I  am  still  of  opinion,  after  reading 
the  whole  context  afresh,  that  my  original  view  of  the  con- 
nection between  the  two  sentences  under  discussion  was 
correct,  and  that  both  were  understood  by  Mr.  Spencer,  when 
he  wrote  them,  to  relate  to  what  he  considers  the  psycho- 
logical aspect  of  the  question.  He  turns  to  this  from  the 
logical  aspect,'  as  he  expressly  announces,  in  the  chapter 
preceding  that  from  which  the  quotation  is  taken,  and  I  find 
no  indication  in  the  interval  that  he  anywhere  considers 
himself  to  return  to  the  logical  aspect. 

*  The  result  of  Prof.  Green's  sifting,'  proceeds  Mr.  Hodgson, 
'  •  •  •  appears  to  be  the  charge  that  Mr.  Spencer  holds  the 
object  to  be  a  consciousness.'  There  is  no  ^  charge '  in  the 
matter  at  all,  but  Mr.  Hodgson  might  as  well  have  stated 
correctly  the  result  at  which  I  represent  Mjr-  Spencer  as 
arriving.  I  say  that  *  the  object,  according  to  him,  is  some- 
thing of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is  consciousness, 
^'  standing  for  "  something  of  which  we  can  only  say  that  it  is 
not  consciousness.'  This  statement  is  founded  on  examina- 
tion of  a  passage  in  which  Mr.  Spencer  apparently  sums  up 
an  argument  which  he  himself  calls  a  *  positive  justification 
of  realism.'     It  is  in  no  way  affected  by  the  fact  that  he  here 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  62y 

expressly  *  limits  his  attention  to  states  of  consciousness.' 
According  to  his  own  account,  he  had  no  alternative  but  to 
do  so,  since  to  exhibit '  cohesions  between  states  of  conscious- 
ness' was  his  only  possible  method.     To  call  attention  to 
this  declaration  would  have  been  to  the  purpose  if  I  had  been 
*  charging'  Mr.  Spencer  with  'holding  the  object  to  be  a 
consciousness.'    It  was  not  to  the  purpose  when  my  point 
was  to  show  that,  while  he  expressly  states  the  object  to  be 
'  out  of  consciousness,'  he  cannot  justify  the  statement  without 
taking  'an  indefinable  consciousness '  to  'stand  for'  the  object. 
The  next  group  of  misinterpretations  which  Mr.  Hodgson 
detects  in  my  criticism  relates  to  Mr.  Spencer's  description 
of  that  psychological  process  by  which,  in  his  own  language, 
he  '  accounts  for  the  deliverance  of  consciousness '  in  which 
he  supposes  the  reality  of  '  something  out  of  consciousness  ' 
to  be  given.     My  point  here  was  twofold— to  show  (1)  that 
the  account  given  of  the  experience  supposed  to  yield  this 
deliverance  is  in  itself  untrue ;  (2)  that  if  the  experience  were 
such  as  Mr.  Spencer  tells  us  that  it  is,  it  could  not  yield  the 
supposed  deliverance.    If  I  had  made  any  attempt  to  show 
that  Mr.  Spencer  believes  the  object  to  be  no  more  than  an 
aggregate  of  vivid  states  of  consciousness,  Mr.  Hodgson's 
complaint  that  I  ignore  certain  passages  in  which  a  contrary 
persuasion  is  stated  would  have  been  to  the  purpose.    But 
there  is  scarcely  a  page  of  my  article  in  which  Mr.  Spencer's 
conviction  of  the  externality  and  independence  of  the  object, 
in  the  various  forms  in  which  it  is  stated  by  him,  is  not  re- 
ferred to.     When  these  references  are  specially  explicit,  Mr. 
Hodgson's  way  is  to  describe  them  as  '  glimpses  which  I  have 
at  last  obtained '  into  Mr.  Spencer's  meaning.    I  might  easily 
have  enlarged  them,  with  the  effect  of  bringing  into  stronger 
relief  the  incoherence  between  his  account  of  the  experience 
by  which  he  supposes  the  conception  of  the  relation  between 
subject  and  object  to  be  generated,  and  his  account  of  that 
relation.    At  the  same  time  I  should  have  needlessly  pro- 
longed an  argument  which  it  was  my  wish  to  condense  as 
much  as  possible. 

It  is  true  that  in  summarising  the  results  of  my  first 
article  at  the  beginning  of  the  second,  I  say,  in  words  which 
Mr.  Hodgson  emphatically  contradicts,  that  Mr.  Spencer,  in 
the  seventh  part  of  his  '  Psychology,'  '  identifies  the  object 
with  a  certain  aggregate  of  vivid  states  of  cousciousness, 

VOL.  I.  MM 


530  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

which  he  makes  out  to  be  independent  of  another  aggregate, 
consisting  of  faint  states  and  identified  with  the  sabject.' 
Similar  language  is  repeated  elsewhere.  In  the  sense  in 
which  I  should  suppose  that  it  would  be  understood  by  any 
one  who  had  read  the  first  article  and  apprehended  its  drift, 
I  adhere  to  the  statement  and  appeal  for  its  justification,  in 
particular,  to  what  I  have  said  and  quoted  on  pp.  40  and  41 
of  my  first  article.*  It  is  throughout  made  perfectly  clear' 
that  the  identification  is  not  imputed  to  Mr.  Spencer  as  an 
opinion  which  he  would  deliberately  accept,  but  as  the  effect 
of  statements  which  he  makes  in  certain  chapters  of  his 
*  Psychology,'  where  he  professes  to  account  for  what  he 
understands  to  be  ^  the  deliverance  of  consciousness '  as  to 
something  beyond  itself.  Mr.  Hodgson,  however,  considers 
that  I  ought  to  have  read  these  statements  in  another  sense 
than  that  which  on  the  face  of  them  they  bear,  because, 
before  entering  on  the  inquiry  *  whether  there  are  any  abso- 
lute cohesions  by  which  the  elements  of  consciousness  are 
aggregated  into  two  antithetical  halves,  standing  respectively 
for  subject  and  object,'  Mr.  Spencer  gives  the  following 
warning :  '  Though  in  every  LQustration  taken  we  shall  have 
tacitly  to  posit  an  external  existence,  and  in  every  reference 
to  states  of  consciousness  we  shall  have  to  posit  an  internal 
existence  which  has  these  states;  yet,  as  before,  we  must 
ignore  these  implications.'  Notwithstanding  this  proviso,  I 
'  actually  venture  to  write  (§  18),  "  All  that  we  have  to  notice 
for  the  present  is,  that  Mr.  Spencer  makes  no  pretence  of 
treating  the  elements  of  the  *  vivid  aggregate '  as  other  than 
states  of  consciousness." '  So  I  wrote,  and  so,  in  the  sense 
which  the  context  gives  to  the  passage,  I  should  venture  to  write 
again.  When  Mr.  Spencer  speaks  of  making  *  the  set  of  visual 
states,  which  he  knows  as  his  umbrella,  move  across  the  sets 
of  visual  states,  which  he  knows  as  the  shingle  and  the  sea,' 
the  meaning  of  his  words  is  not  altered  by  the  warning  previ- 
ously given  that  in  speaking  of  such  states  he  always  *  posits 
external  existence.'  The  description  of  the  umbrella  or  any 
other  sensible  object  as  a  set  of  visual  states  (which  is  not  an 
obiter  dictum  of  Mr.  Spencer,  but  is  in  keeping  with  the 
characteristic  language  and  thought  of  the  chapters  under 
review),  if  it  is  a  wrong  description,  as  I  hold  it  to  be,  is  not 

«  Above,  Part  I,  §§  17-18. 

«  JbUL  Part  I  §  2d,  and  Part  II,  §  52. 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  531 

made  right  by  merely  *  positing  an  -external  existence,'  im- 
plied  in  the  states.  Nor  if,  as  would  seem  to  be  the  case,  the 
experience,  thus  described,  is  being  considered  by  Mr.  Spencer 
as  part  of  a  process  by  which  the  conception  of  the  independ- 
ent  existence  of  the  object  comes  to  be  generated,  was  it 
logically  open  to  him  to  treat  the  experience  as  already 
involving  that  conception.  If  he  does  so,  it  is  an  instance  of 
that  illogical  procedure  which  I  noticed  in  my  second  article ' 
as  occasionally  appearing  in  his  ^  Psychogenesis.'  My  im- 
pression was  that  he  intended,  as  according  to  his  profession 
he  was  bound  to  do,  to  avoid  assuming  the  deliverance  of 
consciousness  in  question  when  describing  the  experience  by 
which  its  genesis  was  to  be  accounted  for.  And  the  point  of 
my  criticism  was  to  show  that  this  experience,  as  he  describes 
it,  in  the  absence  of  such  an  assumption,  is  not  of  a  kind  to 
yield  the  final  deliverance  as  he  describes  it. 

If  I  had  succeeded  in  making  this  point  apparent  to  Mr. 
Hodgson — as  with  greater  power  of  exposition  I  no  doubt 
should  have  done — he  would  have  seen  that  his  exclamations 
are  inappropriate.  Under  the  impression  apparently  that  the 
drift  of  my  argument  was  to  convict  Mr.  Spencer  of  admis- 
sions concerning  the  objective  world  in  the  sense  of  Berkeleyan 
idealism,  he  charges  me  with  confining  my  view  to  the  chap- 
ter (16)  entitled  'Partial  Differentiation  of  Subject  and 
Object ; '  with  treating  this  as  if  it  contained  the  whole  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  case;  and  ignoring  the  chapters  (17  and  18), 
entitled  respectively,  *  Completed  Differentiation  of  Subject,' 
and  *  Developed  Conception  of  the  Object,'  as  well  as  an 
important  passage  which  he  quotes  from  *  First  Principles,' 
p.  154.  Upon  this  I  must  remark  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  main  theses  of  the  *  Completed  Differentiation '  are  dis- 
cussed by  me  in  §§  20-22,  those  of  the  ^  Developed  Con- 
ception' in  §  24,  of  my  first  article.  I  have  not  indeed 
dwelt  on  that  *most  definite  statement'  from  p.  484  of 
the  'Psychology,'  by  which  Mr.  Hodgson  seems  to  think 
that  my  cavilling  should  be  utterly  silenced : — *  Just  in  the 
same  way  that  the  object  is  the  unknown  permanent  nexus 
which  is  never  ifcself  a  phenomenon  but  is  that  which  holds 
phenomena  together ;  so  is  the  subject  the  unknown  per- 
manent nexvs  which  is  never  itself  a  state  of  consciousness 
but  which  holds   states  of   consciousness  together.'      Mr. 

>  Abore,  Part  U,  §  61. 

V  u  2 


632  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

Hodgson  sets  such  store  by  this  passage,  that  it  reappears 
as  wj  final  quietus  at  the  end  of  his  article.  I,  too,  set  some 
store  by  it,  for  while  it  furnishes  an  excellent  account  of  the 
^  something  else '  than  states  of  consciousness  implied  in  all 
our  thinking  and  knowing,  it  furnishes  also  an  admirable 
instance  of  the  involuntary  identification  of  subject  and 
object  on  the  part  of  a  writer  most  vehement  in  asserting 
their  antithesis.  At  this  distance  of  time  I  cannot  pretend 
to  say  why  I  did  not  quote  it,  but  I  can  suggest  a  reason. 
My  purpose  being  to  show  the  insufficiency  of  the  experience 
described  by  Mr.  Spencer  to  account  for  a  deliverance  of 
consciousness  in  which  the  object  is  supposed  to  be  given  as 
something  absolutely  antithetical  to,  and  independent  of,  the 
subject,  I  probably  did  not  care  to  quote  a  definition  of 
subject  and  object  in  which  the  antithesis  virtually  disappears. 
After  a  division  of  *  states  of  consciousness '  into  faint  and 
vivid  aggregates  has  been  taken  as  the  basis  of  the  distinc- 
tion between  subject  and  object — after  an  account  of  expe- 
rience in  which  phenomena  are  virtually  identified  with 
vivid  states  of  consciousness — in  which  at  any  rate  no 
distinction  between  them  appears  but  the  distinction  between 
vivid  states  by  themselves  and  vivid  states  referred  to  an 
unknown  object — it  is  clearly  no  account  of  t>he  antithesis 
between  subject  and  object  to  tell  us  that  it  consists  in  the  one 
being  a  nexus  of  states  of  consciousness,  the  other  a  nexus  of 
phenomena. 

As  for  the  passage  from  *  First  Principles,'  p.  154,  which  I 
am  said  to  have  ignored,  it  forms  part  of  that  version  of  the 
theory  under  review  which,  as  given  in  *  First  Principles,'  I 
discussed  at  length  in  my  second  article.* 

Having  so  far  vindicated  myself  against  the  charge  of 
misrepresentation,  I  readily  allow  that  in  three  places, 
noticed  by  Mr.  Hodgson,  I  have  used  expressions  to  which 
some  exception  may  fairly  be  taken,  though  their  inappro- 
priateness  does  not  aflfect  the  tenor  of  my  argument.  In 
§  17,  after  quoting  the  passage  in  which  Mr.  Spencer 
announces  his  intention  of  '  examining  the  cohesions  among 
the  elements  of  consciousness,'  in  order  to  see  whether  there 
are  *  any  absolute  cohesions  by  which  its  elements  are  aggre- 
gated into  two  antithetical  halves,  standing  respectively  for 
Hubject  and  object,'  I  introduce  another  passage,  from  §  462 

>  Above,  Part  II,  {§  58-61. 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  658 

of  the  *  Psychology/  as  representing  *the  remit  of  the 
examination.'  I  ought  to  have  written  *  the  result  of  the 
first  stage  of  the  examination; '  for,  as  it  occurs  in  the  original, 
the  passage  represents  the  *  partial,'  not  the  *  completed' 
diflFerentiation  of  subject  and  object.  It  gathers  up  Mr. 
Spencer's  account  of  the  experience  which  he  supposes  to 
result  in  '  a  division  of  the  totality  of  consciousness  into  a 
faint  aggregate  which  I  call  my  mind,  and  a  vivid  aggregate 
of  which  part,  called  my  body,  coheres  with  this  in  various 
ways ;  while  the  other  part  has  no  such  coherence  with  the 
vivid  aggregate.'  He  afterwards  proceeds  to  give  an  account 
of  other  experiences — those  of  muscular  tension  and  resist- 
ance— which  he  supposes  to  *give  concreteness '  to  these 
distinctions  and  *  comparative  solidity  to  the  conceptions  of 
self  and  not-self  (§463).  Thus,  if  my  quotation  from 
§  462,  with  the  discussion  of  it,  had  stood  alone ;  if  it  had 
not  been  followed  in  almost  the  immediate  sequel  by  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  further  experience  which,  according  to  Mr. 
Spencer,  completes  *  the  differentiation  of  subject  and  object'; 
I  might  have  been  fairly  chargeable  with  an  incorrect  repre- 
sentation of  his  doctrine.  As  it  is,  though  I  have  used  an 
expression  which  calls  for  the  correction  stated  above,  I  do 
not  see  that  I  am  so  chargeable.  If  the  reader  will  refer  to 
my  criticism  of  the  passage  quoted  from  §  462,  he  will  see 
that  it  is  unaffected  by  my  having  deferred  for  a  page  or  two 
the  consideration  of  the  view  set  forth  in  §  463  and  ff. 

There  are  two  other  cases  where  I  have  used  language 
which,  to  a  very  hasty  reader,  might  cause  misapprehension. 
In  §  21  I  say  that  *  Mr.  Spencer's  account  of  the  experience 
of  resistance,  taken  as  it  stands,  fails  to  prove  the  existence 
of  a  real  world  beyond  consciousness.*  In  §  24  I  say  that 
in  regard  to  the  independence  of  niatter,  *  Mr.  Spencer's  pre- 
misses and  conclusion  do  not  tally*  The  conclusion  is  that 
matter  is  "  something  beyond  consciousness,  which  is  abso- 
lutely independent  of  consciousness,"  but  in  the  premisses  the 
independence  of  matter  merely  means  that  the  "  vivid  aggre- 
gate "  of  conscious  states  is  independent  of  the  "  faint."  * 
Taken  by  themselves,  these  passages  might  be  understood  to 
imply  that  I  took  Mr.  Spencer,  in  the  chapters  specially  under 
review,  to  be  trying  to  prove  the  existence  of  something 
beyond  consciousness  which  is  absolutely  independent  of  it, 
whereas  he  tells  ns  that  he  is  merely  accountincr  for  the 


634  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

'  deliverance  of  conscionsness '  which  announces  such  exist- 
ence.    Accordingly  Mr.  Hodgson  supposes  me  to  have  been 

*  unable  to  see  *  this  not  very  subtle  distinction.  My  criticism, 
however,  of  this  part  of  the  *  Psychology  *  opens  with  a 
quotation  of  the  words  in  which  Mr.  Spencer  states  the  object 
which  he  here  proposes  to  himself:  •'  While  it  is  impossible 
by  reasoning  either  to  verify  or  to  falsify  this  deliverance  of 
consciousness,  it  is  possible  to  account  for  it.  •  .  .  This 
imperative  consciousness  which  we  have  of  objective  existence 
must  itself  result  from  the  way  in  which  our  states  of  con- 
sciousness hang  together.'  And  the  whole  tenor  of  the 
criticism  is  plainly  directed  against  Mr.  Spencer's  theory,  as 
ostensibly  a  theory  of  the  experience  by  which  the  supposed 
deliverance  of  consciousness  as  to  objective  existence  is 
arrived  at.  But  Mr.  Spencer  himself  treats  this  theory — this 
account  of  the  *  processes  by  which  the  realistic  conception  is 
built  up ' — as  *a  positive  justification  of  realism ' ;  ue.  accord- 
ing to  him,  a  positive  justification  of  the  belief  in  the  exist- 
ence of  a  real  world  beyond  consciousness.  When  I  remark 
that  Mr.  Spencer's  account  of  the  experience  of  resistance 

*  fails  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  real  world  beyond  con- 
sciousness,' the  words  do  not  in  themselves  imply  a  supposi- 
tion that  he  himself  intended  to  attempt  any  logical  proof 
in  the  matter.  But  should  they  ever  be  republished,  they 
shall  be  altered  into  *  fails  positively  to  justify,'  &c. 

In  the  other  passage  I  have  been  equally  guilty  of  using 
terms  not  strictly  appropriate ;  for  *  premisses  and  conclu- 
sion '  point  to  a  logical  process,  such  as  Mr.  Spencer  in  his 
^justification  of  realism'  disclaims  attempting.  I  may  be 
l)artly  excused,  however,  when  it  is  considered  that  Mr. 
Spencer,  in  the  chapter  (vii.  18)  which  I  had  before  me  when 
writing  the  objectionable  words  (a  chapter  which  Mr.  Hodg- 
son supposes  me  to  have  ignored),  himself  8i)eaks  of  the 
justified  belief  as  *  a  conclusion.' '  Notwithstanding  this, 
being  {pace  Mr.  Hodgson)  something  of  a  precisionist  in  the 
use  of  terms,  I  undertake  if  ever  I  have  a  chance,  to  substi- 
tute for  *  premisses  and  conclusion,'  in  the  passage  referred 
to,  *  positive  justification '  and  *  justified  belief.'  I  shall  then 
not  be  chargeable  with  describing  Mr.  Spencer's  opinion  in 
any  terms  but  his  own. 

I'he  passage,  however,  in  which  I  fell  into  a  misappro- 

'  Psychology,     §468,  suh  inii. 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR  HODGSON.  636 

priate  use  of  the  terms  *  premisses'  and  'conclusion'  is 
according  to  Mr.  Hodgson  more  seriously  at  fault.  It 
amounts  to  a  '  gross  misstatement.'  He  applies  this  hard 
name  to  it,  because  he  imagines  ivhat  I  call  the '  premisses '  to 
refer  merely  to  chapter  16,*  where  subject  and  object  are  only 
beginning  to  be  distinguished,  while  *  the  conclusion '  is  that 
stated  in  chapter  18.  Over  the  whole  of  chapter  17,  in  which 
the '  differentiation  of  subject  and  object,'  lefb  *  partial '  in  chap. 
17,  is  *  completed,'  I  am  supposed  to  *  take  one  mighty  leap.' 
How  Mr.  Hodgson  comes  by  this  supposition  I  am  honestly 
at  a  loss  to  understand.  In  that  part  of  my  article  which 
precedes  the  *  gross  misstatement,'  I  have  given  fuller  con- 
sideration to  chap.  1 7  than  I  have  to  any  other.  My  criticism 
of  it  may  be  worthless,  but  certainly  I  have  not  overlooked 
it.  I  point  out  that  the  account  there  given  of  the  expe- 
rience of  resistance  is  ostensibly  an  account  of  certain 
changes  which  certain  *  aggregates  of  states  of  conscious- 
ness '  initiate  in  each  other,  and  that,  although  in  the  con- 
clusion it  is  stated  to  be  an  explanation  of  a  process  by 
which  the  *  conception  of  an  independent  source  of  activity 
is  formed,'  the  leap  from  states  of  consciousness  to  what  is 
beyond  consciousness  is  nowhere  really  justified.  The  only 
independence  which  Mr.  Spencer  himself  describes  either  iu 
the  *  partial'  or  the  *  completed  differentiation  of  subject  and 
object '  is  a  relation  in  the  way  of  independence  between  one 
^'ggregate  of  states  of  consciousness  and  another.*  But  in 
chap.  18  this  independence  is  suddenly  and  without  justifica- 
tion transferred  to  something  *  implied  in  the  vivid  aggregate 
of  states  of  consciousness,'  but  which  is  other  than  any  or 
all  of  them — something  which  '  persists '  while  they  pass, 
which  '  keeps  them  together  or  binds  them  into  a  group '  but 
is  not  them.  When  Mr.  Spencer  thus  speaks  of  the  object, 
no  less  than  when  he  speaks  in  practically  indistinguishable 
terms  of  the  subject,  I  am  heartily  at  one  with  him ;  though 
I  may  doubt  the  consistency  of  the  description  with  lan- 
guage elsewhere  used  by  him.  The  question  between  us  is, 
whether  a  relation  of  independence  between  the  vivid  or 
faint  aggregates  of  states  of  consciousness  is  a  sufficient 
ground — and  no  other  ground,  I  must  still  maintain,  is 

'  Principles  of  Psychology,  Part  rii.  may  judge  of  the  appropriateness  of 

*  For  a  summary  view  of  the  theory  my  reniarku,  I  may  refer  to  Frinciplcji 

of  experience  in  question,  given  by  Mr.  qf  Psyclwhyy,  §  438. 

Spencer  himself,  trtjm  which  the  reader 


536  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

alleged  by  Mr.  Spencer — for  asserting  the  object  which  he 
thus  describes  to  be  independent  of  the  subject  which  he 
describes  in  virtaallj  identical  terms.  For  the  discussion  of 
this  question,  if  the  reader  has  any  curiosity  about  it,  I  must 
refer  him  to  the  later  portion  of  my  second  article. 

The  next  misstatement  ascribed  to  me  is  the  following : 
*  The  account  given  of  the  perception  of  an  individual  object 
by  the  school  to  which  Mr.  Spencer  belongs,  and  which  there 
is  reason  to  suppose  that  he  accepts,  is  that  it  consists  in  the 
suggestion  by  a  sensation  of  certain  known  possibilities  of 
sensation,  of  which  through  past  experience  the  given  sensa- 
tion has  become  symbolicaL'  This  statement  is  founded  on 
a  passage  in  the  *  Psychology,*  §  316,  where  Mr.  Spencer 
writes  thus :  *  All  psychologists  concur  in  the  doctrine  that 
most  of  the  elements,  contained  in  the  cognition  of  an 
observed  object,  are  not  known  immediately  through  the 
senses,  but  are  mediately  known  by  instantaneous  ratiocina- 
tion.' I  can  find  nothing  in  the  doctrine  which  I  have 
fathered  upon  Mr.  Spencer  (and  in  which  I  happen  to  con- 
cur) that  is  not  borne  out  by  this  passage,  to  which  the 
reader  was  duly  referred  in  a  note  to  my  article.  Mr.  Hodg- 
son, however,  sees  the  phrase  ^  possibilities  of  sensation,'  and, 
apparently  without  waiting  to  read  the  whole  of  the  sentence 
in  which  it  occurs,  flies  off  into  some  sarcasms  which,  from 
a  literary  point  of  view,  I  rather  admire,  but  which  are  quite 
irrelevant  to  any  statement  of  mine.  He  seems  to  imagine 
that  I  ascribe  to  Mr.  Spencer  the  doctrine  of  Mill,  according 
to  which  the  objects  of  sensation  are  *  groups  of  permanent 
possibilities  of  sensation,'  and  that  I  do  this  from  a  motive, 
of  which  the  suggestion,  I  must  say,  is  unworthy  of  a  serious 
writer.  To  show  that  Mr,  Spencer  rejects  what  he  calls  *  the 
doctrine  of  possibilities  of  sensation,'  he  quotes  a  passage  from 
the  *  Psychology  '  (§  404),  to  which  I  have  myself  referred  in 
my  second  article  (§35),  where  Mr.  Spencer  *  affirms  that  the 
thing  primarily  known  is  not  that  a  sensation  has  been  expe- 
rienced, but  that  there  exists  an  outer  object.'  But  the  *  doc- 
trine of  possibilities  of  sensation '  is  a  phrase  of  indeterminate 
meaning,  which  I  at  least  am  not  guilty  of  using.  If  it 
means  an  opinion  that  the  object  of  sensation  is  no  more  than 
a  group  of  permanent  possibilities  of  sensation — the  opinion, 
apparently,  of  Mr.  Mill — I  do  not  ascribe  it  to  Mr.  Spencer. 
1  find  him,  indeed,  asserting,  if  words  have  meaning,  that 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MB.  HODGSON.  637 

sensible  objects  are  groups  of  sensation — whicli  is  quite 
another  thing,  and,  in  my  judgment,  far  less  rational  than 
saying  that  they  are  groups  of  possMlitiea  of  sensation — but 
I  never  supposed  his  statements  to  that  effect  to  express  his 
real  mind  on  the  matter.  In  the  passage  quoted,  however, 
I  am  not  referring  to  this  lapse  of  thought,  as  I  take  it  to 
be,  on  Mr.  Spencer's  part,  nor  am  I  writing  of  the  individual 
object  as  it  may  be  supposed  to  exist  apart  from  conscious- 
ness, but  of  *  the  perception  of  the  individual  object.'  And 
with  all  the  statements  of  Mr.  Spencer  before  me  to  which 
Mr.  Hodgson  refers,  as  well  as  those  to  which  I  referred  in 
my  article,  I  can  see  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Mr.  Spencer 
does  in  essence  (which  is  all  that  is  implied)  accept  the 
doctrine  of  perception  stated  in  the  passage  with  which  Mr. 
Hodgson  finds  fault.  It  would  have  been  safer,  however, 
with  a  view  to  such  readers,  if  I  had  avoided  altogether  the 
phrase  '  possibilities  of  sensation '  (which  I  learn  for  the  first 
time  has  a  *  dyslogistic  connotation '),  and  had  written,  in- 
stead of  *  consists  in  the  suggestion,  &c.'  ^  contains  elements 
not  known  immediately  through  the  senses,  but  mediately 
by  instantaneous  ratiocination.'  I  should  then  have  been 
using  Mr.  Spencer's  own  words,  and  tlie  purpose  of  my  argu- 
ment, in  this  connection^  would  have  been  equally  well 
served. 

That  argument  is  that,  if  this  view  of  perception  is  true, 
memory  and  inference,  which,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer's 
dichotomy  of  consciousness,  must  be  considered  successions 
of  its  faint  states,  are  as  necessary  to  any  perception  of 
objects  as  is  the  succession  of  vivid  states  called  sensation ; 
that  accordingly,  if  we  are  to  admit  that  objects,  as  per- 
ceived, consist  of  states  of  consciousness  at  all  (which  it  is 
needless  to  say  that  I  do  not  admit),  we  must  admit  that 
^  faint '  states  enter  into  them  no  less  than  ^  vivid '  ones,  and 
that  the  vivid  ones  enter  into  them  only  as  qualified  by  the 
faint.  Now,  Mr.  Spencer,  in  his  account  of  the  diflFerentia- 
tion  of  subject  and  object,  does  undoubtedly  speak  of  the 
ordinary  objects  of  perception — his  umbrella,  the  shingle, 
the  sea,  &c. — as  clusters  of  states  of  consciousness.  Accord- 
ing to  him  they  are  clusters  of  oivid  states,  but  I  demur  to 
this  restriction.  'If,'  I  argue  (§  29),  *  vivid  states  contribute 
to  form  objects  at  all,  they  do  so  as  determined  by  faint 
ones ;  and  if  the  "  vivid  aggregate  "  is  to  bo  identified  with 


638  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 

the  objective  world,  we  must  say  that  only  qualification  by 
the  **  faint  aggregate ''  or  subject  renders  it  such  a  world  at 
all.'  But  an  object  so  qualified  by  the  subject  cannot  be 
independent  of  the  subject,  as  Mr.  Spencer  says  that  it  is. 

I  must  have  failed  to  make  the  drift  of  this  argument 
plain  to  Mr.  Hodgson  (for  which  I  readily  take  the  blame  to 
myself),  since  he  meets  it  with  the  following  negations,  of 
which,  as  he  proceeds  to  explain  them,  only  one  is  to  the 
purpose.  '  Mr  Spencer  does  not  suppose  *^  sensible  objects  " 
to  be  vivid  states  of  consciousness  or  clusters  of  them ;  he 
does  not,  in  the  discussion  criticised,  lose  sight  of  the  &ct 
that  our  perceptions  are  acquired  perceptions ;  he  not  only 
does  7U)t  deny,  but  he  expressly  mentions,  that  faint  states 
do  cohere  with  the  vivid ;  and  the  "  independence  of  the 
faint  aggregate ''  is  not  the  independence  which  Professor 
Green  interprets  it  to  be.'  If  emphasis  of  negation  could 
settle  the  question,  this  would  settle  it ;  but  the  question 
must  be  understood,  or  the  negations  are  of  little  avail. 
The  first  of  the  above  negations  would  certainly  be  to  the 
purpose  if  for  *  does  not  suppose '  we  wrote  *  does  not  say,^ 
but  then  I  should  dispute  its  correctness.  As  has  been  said 
more  than  once,  I  never  imagined,  and  made  it  abundantly 
clear  that  I  did  not  imagine,  that  if  Mr.  Spencer  were  asked 
whether  he  supposed  a  *  sensible  object'  to  be  merely  a 
cluster  of  vivid  states  of  consciousness,  he  would  allow  that 
he  did.  But  to  any  one  who  will  read  his  account  of  the 
experience  by  which  he  supposes  the  differentiation  of 
subject  and  object,  as  he  understands  it,  to  arise,  it  most  be 
perfectly  clear,  not  only  that  he  does  in  words  expressly 
identify  sensible  objects  vrith  *  clusters  of  vivid  states  of 
consciousness,'  but  that,  if  he  did  not,  the  whole  account 
would  lose  its  point.  The  observation  of  the  manner  in 
which  ^our  states  of  consciousness  segregate  themselves 
into  two  independent  aggregates,*  the  vivid  and  the  faint^ 
would  no  longer  appear  to  generate  the  conception  of  object 
and  subject  as  separate  and  independent  existences.  To 
urge  that  the  aggregates  of  states  of  consciousness,  and  the 
several  clusters  which  compose  them,  are  throughout  under- 
stood by  Mr.  Spencer  to  imply  something  else  unknown, 
does  not  affect  my  argument.  I  demur  equally  to  the  doc- 
trine that  liis  umbrella  is  a  cluster  of  vivid  states  and  to  the 
doctrine  that  it  is  a  cluster  of  vivid  states  as  implying  som^ 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON.  «30 

thing  else  unknown^  on  the  double  ground  tha:t  yivid  states 
do  not  enter  into  the  composition  of  the  sensible  object  at 
all,  and  that,  if  they  are  to  be  held  to  enter  into  it,  they 
must  be  held  to  do  so  only  as  qualified  by  *  faint '  ones. 

The  first  of  the  aboye  denials,  then,  according  to  any 
meaning  in  which  it  would  affect  my  argument,  seems  to  me 
for  the  reasons  stated  inadmissible.  The  rest  have  no 
bearing  on  it.  If  Mr.  Spencer  ^  does  not  in  the  discussion 
criticised  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that  our  perceptions  are 
acquired  perceptions;'  if,  in  this  context,  he  admits  that 
memory  and  inference  are  necessary  to  the  perception  of 
objects,  this  merely  strengthens  my  case.  If  I  had  noticed 
in  these  chapters  a  passage  implying  such  an  admission 
(which  I  confess  that  I  have  not  yet  done),  I  need  not  have 
gone  so  far  back  as  the  previous  §  315  to  find  one.  It  is, 
further,  quite  true  that  Mr.  Spencer  (as  I  have  more  than 
once  noticed)  *  not  only  does  not  deny,  but  expressly  mentions 
that  faint  states  cohere  with  the  vivid,'  in  the  sense  of  being 
*  always  dragged  along  by  them.'  But  this,  again,  does 
not  affect  my  argument,  unless  this  cohesion  is  understood 
to  mean  that  the  constituents  of  the  vivid  aggregate,  in  any 
sense  in  which  they  can  be  taken  to  be  constituents  of  per- 
ceived objects,  are  qualified  by  constituents  of  the  faint 
aggregate.  And,  if  it  is  so  understood,  how  can  ^  observation 
of  the  segregation  of  the  two  aggregates '  justify,  partially  or 
completely,  the  belief  that  the  object  is  independent  of  the 
subject  P 

Finally,  *  the  independence  of  the  faint  aggregate '  (on  the 
part  of  the  vivid)  *  is  not  the  independence  which  Professor 
Green  interprets  it  to  be.'  But  Mr.  Hodgson  does  not  say 
what  I  interpret  it  to  be.  According  to  him  this  *  independ- 
ence '  means  that  *  the  vivid  states  drag  along  the  faint,  but 
the  faint  have  no  effe^.t  on  the  vivid.'  I  say  nothing  incom- 
patible with  this  iLt3rpretation  of  the  independence  which 
Mr.  Spencer  ascribes  to  the  vivid  aggregate.  On  the  contrary, 
I  take  due  notice  of  it  (§  29),  and  explain  in  what  sense  I 
conceive  that  the  *  vivid  aggregate '  must  be  understood  if 
such  independence  is  to  be  ascribed  to  it.  Sensations  *  drag 
after  them '  ideas  of  memory  and  imagination,  but  these 
ideas  do  not  ^  drag  after  them '  sensations.  Independence, 
therefore,  may  be  ascribed  in  the  above  sense  to  the  vivid 
aggregate  if  this   aggregate  is  understood  simply  as  the 


b40  AN  ANSWER  TO  MR  HODGSON. 

succession  of  sensations,  and  it  is  in  no  way  to  the  purpose 
of  my  argument  to  deny  or  ignore  this.  But  if  *  an  obser- 
vation of  the  segregation  of  the  two  aggregates '  is  with  any 
plausibility  to  explain  the  growth  of  a  conviction  that  the 
object  is  independent  of  the  subject,  the  vivid  aggregate 
must  be  understood  as  something  else  than  the  succession  of 
sensations.  It  must  be  understood,  consistently  with  Mr. 
Spencer's  illustrations,  as  an  aggregate  of  perceived  objects. 
My  point  was  to  show  that  it  cannot  be  so  understood 
without  the  implication  of  states,  as  entering  into  and  qua- 
lifying it,  which,  according  to  his  *  division  of  the  totality  of 
consciousness,'  fall  to  the  faint  aggregate ;  and  that  this 
implication  is  fatal  to  that  interpretation  of  our  experience, 
as  composed  of  mutually  exclusive  aggregates  of  states,  on 
which  Mr.  Spencer  founds  his  justification  of  Bealism — 
his  justification  of  the  doctrine  that  the  object  is  external 
to,  and  independent  of,  the  subject.  There  may  be  much 
to  say  against  this  argument,  but  Mr.  Hodgson  has  not 
said  it. 

I  have  now  traversed,  one  by  one,  the  specific  charges  of 
misconception  and  misinterpretation  which  Mr.  Hodgson 
brings  against  my  first  article,  so  far  as  they  relate  to  the 
main  thesis  of  that  article  and  to  passages  which  I  quote 
from  the  *  Principles  of  Psychology.*  There  are  two  other 
misapprehensions  of  a  more  general  nature,  which  he  alleges 
against  me  at  the  outset  of  his  article,  but  which  cannot  be 
here  examined  without  exceeding  my  limits  of  time  and 
space.  I  do  not  admit  myself  to  be  guilty  of  either,  but,  as 
I  am  not  accused  in  reference  to  them  of  unfair  dealing  with 
Mr.  Spencer's  statements,  their  consideration  may  be  deferred 
to  a  more  convenient  season.  Nor  am  I  concerned  to  inquire 
how  far  the  doctrines  which  I  venture  to  state  on  my  own 
account  in  my  second  article  coincide,  as  Mr.  Hodgson  says 
they  do,  with  those  adopted  by  Mr.  Spencer  in  other  parts 
of  his  *  Psychology.'  So  far  as  this  coincidence  exists,  iti 
would  have  enabled  me  to  illustrate  more  fully  the  inconsist^ 
ency  between  Mr.  Spencer's  doctrine  of  the  independence 
and  externality  of  the  object  and  other  theories  which  he 
holds.  But  to  trace  this  inconsistency  soon  became  a 
weary  task,  and  as  my  project  was  to  examine  the  intrinsic 
value  of  his  doctrine  on  this  particular  point,  I  thought  it 
better,  having  quoted  him  sufficiently  to  show  what  the  doc- 


AN  ANSWER  TO  MR.  HODGSON. 


£41 


trine  was,  to  criticise  it  from  my  own  point  of  view  rather 
than  to  compare  it  with  other  opinions  elsewhere  advanced 
by  him.  If  I  had  been  undertaking  a  general  estimate  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  work  as  a  psychologist,  it  would  have  been  tny 
business  to  examine  thoroughly  his  opinions  on  those  points 
on  which  I  express  my  own ;  and  in  doing  this  I  should 
frequently  have  had  occasion  to  express  admiration  for  the 
felicitous  statement  of  judgments  which  I  believe  to  be 
important  and  true.  With  the  special  object  before  me, 
which  I  had  set  myself  and  which  I  announced,  I  do  not 
conceive  that  it  would  have  been  to  the  purpose  to  do  so.* 


*  [Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  criticised 
the  *  Answer  to  Mr.  Hodgson '  in  the 
Contemporary  Beview  for  February 
1881.  Professor  Green  did  not  con- 
tinue the  discussion  further,  but  wrote 
to  the  editor  of  the  Contemporcury 
Beview  a  private  letter,  of  which  a  draft 
to  the  following  effect  is  found  amount 
his  papers : — '  While  I  cannot  honestly 
retract  anything  in  the  substance  of 
what  I  then  wrote,  there  are  expres- 
sions in  the  article  which  I  very  much 
regret,  so  far  as  they  might  be  taken 
to  imply  want  of  personal  respect  for 
Mr.  Spencer.    For  reasons  sufficiently 


given  in  my  reply  to  Mr.  Hodgson,  I 
cannot  plead  guilty  to  the  charge  of 
misrepresentation  which  Mr.  Spencer 
repeats;  but  on  reading  my  first  article 
again  in  cold  blood  I  found  that  I  had 
allowed  controversial  heat  to  betray  me 
into  the  use  of  language  which  was  un- 
becoming— especially  on  the  part  of  an 
unknown  writer  (not  even  then  a  '*  pro- 
fessor") assailing  a  veteran  philosopher. 
I  make  this  acknowledgment  merely 
for  my  own  satisfaction,  not  under  the 
impression  that  it  can  at  all  concern 
Mr.  Spencer.*— Ed.] 


^^^^^%^^ 


XTNIV 


ERSITTJ 


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